


Acquainted with the Night

by Aelfgyfu



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Bechdel Test Pass, Drama, Epilogue, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelfgyfu/pseuds/Aelfgyfu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why can't the alternate universe ever be nicer than one's own? Missing scenes for “The Road Not Taken”: we certainly didn’t see Sam’s whole two weeks! The epilogue to this story follows “The Shroud.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acquainted with the Night

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS: “The Road Not Taken,” “The Shroud,” and previous episodes.
> 
> Originally posted on my old site, Aelfgyfu's Mead Hall, 26 Sep 2007.
> 
> Many thanks once again to Redbyrd and to my Brilliant Husband for close readings, catching errors, and making many great suggestions. Remaining errors are solely mine (except for those that actually appeared on screen during the episodes, for which I take no credit).
> 
> Disclaimers: _Stargate SG-1_ and its characters belong to Gekko, MGM-UA, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions, Stargate SG-1 Prod. Ltd. Partnership, and probably other persons or entities whom I’ve forgotten. No copyright infringement is intended. In fact, my stories make no sense if you haven’t seen the shows, so I encourage you to watch! And buy all the DVDs! Just like I do! Dialogue and plot (such as they are) are my own.

_I have been one acquainted with the night.  
_ _I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.  
_ _I have outwalked the furthest city light....  
_ _. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
_ _And further still at an unearthly height  
_ _One luminary clock against the sky  
_ _Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.  
_ _I have been one acquainted with the night._  
Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night” (from _New Hampshire_ , 1923)

 

Saving the Earth—the Jack O’Neill in her head added, “Again”—was heady, even if it wasn’t her Earth. Sam watched in amazement as a huge yellow-orange flood of light went through them and the lab. She had seen the effects—or lack thereof—of weapons on out-of-phase matter before, but this was pretty damned impressive—more than impressive enough to more than warrant Bill Lee’s exclamations.

Then suddenly he was hugging her, and she wasn’t entirely sure _that_ was warranted; she fumbled awkwardly, unsure whether to return the hug, and felt a rush of relief when she managed to pry herself loose that almost matched the rush at seeing the weapons fire pass harmlessly through. She knew her reaction was ridiculous. It must still be adrenalin.

It was just too weird to be hugged by a Bill Lee that wasn’t _her_ Bill Lee, although being hugged by Dr. Lee would be a little disturbing all by itself. Then other people swarmed all over her, shaking her hand, patting her on the back or shoulder, or occasionally hugging her (though not as enthusiastically as Bill Lee, and for that she was grateful). Some of them she was sure she had never met, but a few were people she had met at _her_ Area 51, and she kept thinking that she really didn’t know them at all.... So after a few minutes of congratulations and screams and hugs from strangers, most of whom apparently thought they knew her but called her “Major,” she wandered off. 

This Area 51 seemed to be arranged much like the one in her own universe. She walked away from the lab she’d been in, away from the whole cluster of labs, a little surprised that no one stopped her. Then she had a thought: they told her Vala was here. Suddenly she thought she ought to see Vala, even though she knew it wasn’t _her_ Vala—and she thought at the same moment how odd it was to be thinking of Vala as _hers_ ; even though they went shopping together and chuckled about “the boys” behind their backs (and sometimes to their faces), Sam didn’t feel the other woman had entirely let her in. That was only fair, because she hadn’t entirely let Vala in, either.

The day could hardly get any weirder, though, and Sam kept thinking about Vala. If she hadn’t managed to escape yet—and if she had, she hadn’t left Earth, and they’d apparently gotten her back—she must be bored out of her mind.

Sam concocted an excuse about needing information on alien technology, but then she didn’t even need it; she smiled, waved her ID, and was allowed in by guards who were so relieved to be alive they probably would have given her their keys and their wallets if she’d asked.

One of the guards went back with Sam to open the outer door to the first cell. 

“Hello!” she said brightly as she came in the room and recognized the woman lying on her back on the narrow bunk. There was no chair to pull up to the bars, but Sam knew she couldn’t stay long. She walked up to the bars and waited for Vala to get up.

Vala turned her head as little as she could and still see Sam. Then she resumed staring at the ceiling.

“Vala?” she asked, realizing that this universe’s Major Carter might not have met this Vala. “Do you recognize me?”

Vala turned her head again, this time studying her. “No,” she answered flatly.

Sam shifted her weight uneasily. Yes, this was probably a mistake. But she wasn’t doing this for herself; Vala must be going stir crazy here. “Well, I know you. Sort of,” she smiled apologetically, realizing that she couldn’t tell Vala the truth. “Let’s say we have a mutual friend.”

“Oh? And who would that be?” Vala looked bored, but she was watching Sam very closely through those half-closed eyes. Her voice sounded low and tired.

“Daniel Jackson,” Sam tried.

Vala shook her head. “Is he one of the guards? Some of them think we’re _friends_.” She made the word sound nasty.

Were things that different here? “Daniel Jackson,” she repeated. “He’s the reason you came here! With your tablet!”

“I came here,” Vala answered, “with _my_ tablet, because the individual from whom I received it told me that it referred to a treasure on your _godforsaken planet_.” Her voice was cold until she injected venom into the last two words. Sam stepped further back as Vala slowly sat up. “It took weeks to find someone from your planet. They took me back, with _my_ tablet and _my_ offers to cut them in on _my_ find, and then they _imprisoned_ me.”

“You never talked to Daniel?”

“Well, I did if he’s one of the scum that locked me up,” the other woman said. “And I know they found my treasure, because occasionally they come and ask me how to use something they found, but all my attempts to cooperate have gotten me...nothing.”

She walked slowly to the bars. Sam was glad she wasn’t standing right up against them anymore. This Vala looked older, oddly, and more tired, and even thinner. Her tone chilled Sam.

“So if you’re here to ask for my help, you can—”

Sam held up her hands. “I just came here to talk. I’m sorry. I guess...there was some kind of misunderstanding. I just thought you’d been locked up here—God, a year and a half?—and I thought you might want to talk to someone....”

Vala laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. It was downright creepy. “Oh, I’ve talked. I’ve talked and talked. I’ve offered information, made deals—I’ve earned myself desserts now! As if I wanted any of that _gonach_ you consider food.”

If she wasn’t being missed, Sam decided, she damn well ought to be. She backed away, feeling for the door.

“So what did you come here to talk about? The weather? Can’t see or feel it in here. Fashion? I could use some new clothes. When I’ll be freed—as I was once promised?” Bitter anger flowed freely again at the end. “You people have told me you’re fighting the Goa’uld. At least the Goa’uld, when they finished with you, would either let you go or _end it!_ ”

Sam practically dove through the door, nearly bumping into both guards; it looked like they’d been trying to decide whether to come in.

“Sorry, ma’am,” one apologized. “I guess I should have told you not to go in there. She’s a nasty piece of work.”

Sam tried to smile a little. “I thought...I thought she was someone I met somewhere else. Off world,” she added hastily. “But I guess I just...the name sounded similar.”

They nodded and let her out of the cell area.

Sam wandered the labs some more, hoping to avoid people. She could feel her cheeks burning. Embarrassed? Why? Those guards hadn’t seen anything. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

Except maybe she had. She had told herself she’d do something nice for Vala, but what she really wanted was to see the Vala who had become her friend, who said outrageous things and made her laugh. The Vala who insisted that they would find Daniel all right, although Vala had witnessed so much evil in the universe, trapped within her own body, even watching it do some of that evil. A Vala who might encourage Sam to believe she could find a way home.

And Sam hadn’t even realized what she really wanted until she didn’t get it. 

Far too soon Sam found herself back among cheering personnel, one of whom said, “We thought we lost you for a bit there!” and she didn’t have to work hard to bring a smile because, after all, she had just saved the Earth, and maybe made Major Carter’s death worth something.

***

Too keyed up to sleep, Sam managed to find her own equipment and set to work with her laptop. No one was asking her for anything at the moment, so she could finally return to her own quest. She had to reconstruct Rodney McKay’s bridge between universes. If McKay could do it, surely she could too. She cursed herself for not having more data on the project, and then she cursed the laptop for not having more memory so that she could have put more data on it.

Suddenly someone was telling her that the President wanted her back at the SGC, and she saved and shut down everything, and then she was flying back to the mountain in a helicopter.

On the way, everyone kept thanking her, from her departure all the way into Cheyenne Mountain. People she was certain she had never met in any universe all thanked her. Everyone seemed to want to touch her. She was overwhelmed. She just wanted to sleep now, and then wake up and get home.

Landry thanked her and walked her down a hallway, towards the Gateroom. She didn’t know why, but she did find some comfort in the familiar voice. His assurance that she’d “figure it out” gave her a moment of hope.

Then she was in front of a mob of reporters—or maybe it wasn’t so many, but they were awfully loud and demanding—and she could remember to smile or she could talk, but she couldn’t manage both at the same time, and she was so glad to be alone when they took her back to a VIP room to sleep that she managed to fall asleep without thinking too much about how really alone she was.

She woke up with that thought uppermost, however, not even enjoying the moment of peace she often found just before she realized that she was asleep on a strange planet. No, this time she woke up knowing right away that everything was wrong. Without an immediate crisis, she had to face the reality that she was stranded.

Of course, maybe she woke up knowing that everything was wrong because someone was knocking at her door. She answered it and found an airman; he had been sent to bring food and to tell her that she had a soirée to attend, so could she please pick some things out for tonight, and she was too surprised both at her presence being required and at an airman using the word “soirée” to ask too many questions. Such as why she was being given some dresses to try on instead of dress blues. She realized she had gotten back late at night, or very early in the morning, and had slept into the early afternoon.

She ate a salad, picked at a sandwich, and then made herself go through the dresses. Going shopping was fun, especially with a friend.... Picking from a pile of clothes brought to her in a small room with a tiny mirror while wishing she could just go home was not.

Left alone with the clothes, Sam momentarily wondered if this Samantha Carter was a civilian. Then she remembered that this Carter was Major Carter; she must still be exhausted to have forgotten. Major Carter, a woman taking an even slower path to promotion than Sam herself had. Not, as in those universes, a civilian. Not, as in those universes, married to Jack O’Neill.

Jack O’Neill. She hadn’t thought to ask about him when she asked after the rest of SG-1; she asked later, when she met George Hammond and wondered how Lorne got to be the head of his flagship team while still a major. She wished she hadn’t asked. Until that moment, she could imagine that the man she knew as general had received a similar promotion here, even if he hadn’t taken Hammond’s place, or at least that his knees had landed him a desk job. But instead, she learned that he’d never been promoted to general, that he died in the field not too long after Thor had revived him.... Why did she have to ask anyway? Well, no dumber than trying to talk to Vala. She struggled into a dress.

Sometimes she had wondered if the other Sams married to the other Jacks meant she should have taken that path too. She felt—well, damn it, safe with him. As Hallucination Jack O’Neill had told her when she had that head injury on the Prometheus. But God, he had to be better than McKay! She snorted and managed to get the dress on more or less correctly.

Crap, why had she even tried on this hideous green dress? Next! Where they hell did they get this stuff? The black dress looked like something she might actually buy for herself, even if she never had occasion to wear such things anymore, but the green dress looked like it had run away from a prom—in embarrassment. Surely these weren’t Major Sam Carter’s clothes? Or did the woman have as good taste in clothes as she did in men?

Sam could focus. She could focus on finding things that matched. Simple. She could do it without even thinking about the last time she’d really enjoyed dressing up, without thinking about Pete Shanahan, without wondering if they could have managed to work things out—without wondering if Fifth’s scenario of her living out a life full of Pete and empty of the Stargate Program had helped to scare her out of what might have been a happy marriage.

Okay, she _could_ get dressed without thinking about Jack, or Pete, but she _wasn’t_ doing it. The black dress was much better, though it felt strange to be wearing it to pretend to be _Major_ Carter. Also on the cart were shoes to match the selection of dresses, a little evening purse, and assorted accessories.

She dropped a strand of pearls and tried again. The silver necklace and the silver bracelets. There. That should do it. 

A few more minutes to do some makeup. It was all so disorienting, like home but not like home. Uncanny. _Unheimlich_. She remembered Daniel and Teal’c discussing Freud’s notion of the _unheimlich_. She couldn’t remember why they’d been talking about it. Maybe she’d missed the start of that conversation.

Daniel would probably have found comfort in the term, in being able to identify things and feelings with words. But she couldn’t find any comfort there. Once she was alone again, in a limo, she turned on its TV and watched Julia Donovan talk about what had just happened, which only made events seem that much more surreal.

Bill called, and she allowed herself a moment of hope before he told her in a voice that conveyed what had happened before his words did, “The preliminary simulations were a bust. There's just no way we can replicate the conditions that originally brought you here. Not unless we can control the environment on both sides of the bridge.”

She sighed and told him she’d be there tomorrow. She would much rather be there tonight. On to the “soirée.”

She had barely gotten inside before she was accosted by well-wishers. A man whose name she instantly forgot thanked her “on behalf of the people of the great state of Idaho.” She hardly knew what to say. 

The man’s wife added, “Keep up the good work, dear,” as if she were a child in school. Oh, God. What she wouldn’t give to have her team here, to smile and say mildly inappropriate things to people’s faces and wickedly inappropriate things behind their backs! Of course, Vala might do it the other way round. Sam nearly sighed. She had been to these things before, sometimes with General O’Neill. He made them bearable. 

Landry approached. “Enjoying the party?” 

Did he understand how awful this was? She kept something resembling a smile on her face as she told him, “Uh...I'm not sure that's exactly the right word, sir.” 

Yes, she caught a glint of sympathy there—as he ordered her to drink and relax.

“I guess I'm just not used to all the attention,” she apologized. 

Landry raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “They do things differently where you come from?”

Yes. Where I come from, the Stargate is a secret. “Well, no, it's not just that...” When she had time, she’d ask him how that worked, making it public. Maybe they could learn some things for their own use when they went public—assuming she ever got back. But now wasn’t that time. “I feel like an impostor, sir. I mean, these people think that I'm ‘Major’ Samantha Carter.”

Landry chuckled. “That won't be a problem anymore. We're promoting you!”

Something about his tone rubbed her the wrong way. “Uh—yeah. That's not the point, sir.”

Landry nodded sympathetically. “People here have been through a lot lately. They need something to believe in. Your timing is impeccable.”

Impeccable? That’s how he would describe the timing that got this world’s Samantha Carter and another scientist killed and ripped her from her own world, her friends?

Suddenly someone burst in shouting. She made out the words the second time he yelled them: “No security without freedom!” 

Sam turned to look, and the man continued even as he scuffled with men in suits and Charlie hustled her and Landry out of the way: “We will NOT be silenced by acts of tyranny. Our voices will be heard! No security without freedom! No security...!”

And yet he _was_ silenced: while Sam watched in horror, one of the security men produced a Goa’uld pain stick and used it on the dissident before they dragged him away. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, his body limp—

Suddenly she and Landry were somewhere else.

“Prometheus,” Sam realized.

Landry grunted agreement while walking into a room decked out unlike any she’d seen on any of her Earth’s fleet. She was both surprised and not surprised to hear a disembodied voice welcoming them to Air Force One.

Sam waited for a moment. Hoping that Landry would ask the voice to start an inquiry into the use of the pain stick, but he didn’t. Instead, he offered her a drink.

It was all she could do to maintain some semblance of manners: “No...thank you. Sir, what the hell just happened?”

“My security detail can get a little overprotective. Probably just could've gone out the back way.” He poured himself a drink.

Was he really that obtuse, or was he keeping her off balance deliberately? “Uh, I meant the protestor, sir.”

He let out a long breath. “Not everyone is happy about some of the compromises we've had to make.”

“Compromises like martial law?”

“Believe me, Colonel, I have no desire to go down in history as the man who destroyed civil liberties in America.” She could believe him; his voice was heavy. But then he smiled and added, “But I think you'll agree that compared to other Presidents, I've faced some pretty unique challenges.” 

Now she had Jack O’Neill’s voice in her head, distracting her, telling her that “unique” was absolute and could not take modifiers. Oddly, the thought calmed her, kept her from asking if martial law really required Goa’uld pain sticks—and what other alien technology was being used against fellow humans. She tuned out Landry talking about the difficulty of losing a carrier group to a foe they’d never admitted existed, about Russian aggression and Chinese threats, about a possible fifth column here at home.

Eventually Landry noticed that she was barely nodding, and maybe not in the right places, and he allowed her to go back to the SGC and finally get a proper night’s sleep. Assuming that she could, in fact, sleep.

***

That assumption was only half right. Sam was tired enough to fall asleep, but not tired enough to stay asleep. She woke up from a nightmare of pain sticks to find it was still what her father always called “oh dark hundred.” She missed her father. 

That thought sent her sitting bolt upright. In this universe, Jack O’Neill was dead, Landry was president and not general, Hammond was still on active duty—could her father still be alive? She still had Major Samantha Carter’s clearance; they’d given her all the necessary key cards and passwords while she worked on their Earth’s defenses. She could find that information.

She threw her BDUs back on and practically ran down to the lab belonging to this universe’s Carter. She fired up the computer.

The mission reports were bewildering. She expected to find mostly the same missions that she had had over the past few years, but after the attack on Antarctica, nearly all similarity ended. Major Carter had written surprisingly few mission reports after that. SG-1 seemed to be a team in name more than anything else. Her counterpart had spent far more time in the lab than in the field over the past three years.

It was therefore all too easy to find the mission report describing Colonel O’Neill’s death, even without really looking for it. As in her universe, they had learned of a secret base that once belonged to Anubis; as in her world, SG-1 had gone there. As in her universe, they’d been trapped in the fortress for days.

When they emerged to find themselves under fire from Ba’al, this Colonel O’Neill had shouted, “Dial it up!” and this Samantha Carter had dialed the SGC, under fire and not taking the time to think that they must have been listed as missing. But in her own universe, General O’Neill had heard their voices and let them through, breaking protocol. In this universe, General Hammond had directed them to dial another planet. And Colonel O’Neill had covered Major Carter while she redialed, and this Samantha Carter had connected to a safe planet only to realize that her Jack had been hit. Teal’c had grabbed him, and the three of them who could still shoot had returned fire while backing onto Cimmeria. 

Why not the Alpha Site? Had that already been shut down? Sam had to wonder.

But that thought quickly left her mind. The wording of the report seemed so familiar that she could have written it, except that she wasn’t there. The other Sam Carter was there, the Sam Carter who had made the same mistake she and Daniel had in their more forgiving universe—but in this less forgiving one, it had cost Jack O’Neill his life. “Doctor Jackson and I attempted to begin CPR despite the severity of Colonel O’Neill’s chest and abdominal wounds from the staff weapons while Teal’c dialed the SGC. A medical team arrived in less than ten minutes. Doctor Brightman pronounced Colonel O’Neill dead shortly thereafter.” The report didn’t end there. “Dialing the SGC instead of a safe planet during a firefight, after prolonged lack of communication with the SGC, resulted in Colonel O’Neill’s death. I accept full responsibility for my failures on this mission. Doctor Jackson and Teal’c behaved admirably under fire and did their utmost to ensure the survival of the full team.”

Sam realized she had jammed her fist to her mouth at some point. She stopped reading. What was the point?

Sam tried to tell herself she hadn’t killed Jack O’Neill, that it was someone who just happened to have her name and her face—killing someone who looked and no doubt sounded and acted like Jack O’Neill. And she knew her Daniel and Cam would say the same thing, that it wasn’t her fault; Teal’c would likely take it as self-evident and say nothing.

But it was just luck that she hadn’t killed anyone on the mission to P2X-887, luck that General O’Neill had been heading the SGC at the time and had let them through. 

She took her hand away from her mouth. Get over it, she said to herself: you didn’t really kill Jack O’Neill, and maybe your father is still alive.

Thank God Major Carter still had access to virtually all mission reports, not just her own, or Sam would have no idea what had been going on here the past three years. Her counterpart had gone on hardly any missions after Jack’s death. She could find many technical reports and even theoretical papers, but few mission reports, in her own name.

In her universe, her father’s symbiote had died working on the weapon on Dakara. Sam searched for the planet by name. Nothing. She tried the older spelling, Takara, remembering with gratitude a long discourse Daniel had given on the two names, after he descended. Again, nothing. She tried the designation, the Gate symbols; nothing. This SGC knew nothing of Dakara. Nothing.

After only a moment’s thought, Sam quickly backtracked and wiped out all traces of her searches. She could not alert them to such a powerful weapon if they didn’t already know. That weapon could lead to disaster. Instead, she searched for reports on the Replicators.

This time, she found plenty—and reading it made her blood run cold. In this universe, Hammond refused to allow her—Major Carter, she had to remind herself, not _her_ —near the Replicator version of herself. They distrusted the intel the Replicator had given them, and in the end, they destroyed her, proving that the weapon worked. Very shortly thereafter, a fleet of Replicators, presumably led by Fifth, had appeared—and the weapon seemed to have worked completely.

No further war with the Replicators. Daniel had never been kidnapped and killed by her Replicator double in this universe. So the alternate Sam Carter had killed Jack O’Neill but not Daniel Jackson; Sam had simply done the reverse. The Daniel in this universe hadn’t ascended again because he hadn’t been murdered by someone wearing her face. All those people who had died fighting Replicators, here and on Dakara, hadn’t. The weapon on Dakara was never needed and never found, as far as the SGC knew, at least. 

Sam had figured out nearly two years ago what these reports now confirmed. If she hadn’t been the one questioning RepliCarter—as she knew most people called it, though no one would say the name to her face—none of those people would have suffered and died. All those lost lives, all that pain and suffering, and then all that internal strife among the Jaffa—none of it had happened. Which meant that in her universe, it really was her fault. Not just Daniel’s abduction and murder by her Replicator double, but all of it. If she hadn’t made the mistake of trusting the Replicator, everything could have been avoided.

So the weapon on Dakara had never been found, let alone used. No need to tinker with it. Then her father was alive. Presumably. 

Suddenly she could hear General O’Neill’s Homer Simpson imitation in her head: “D’oh!” She should have simply been looking for Jacob Carter or Selmak. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Did she _want_ to wallow in her mistakes? Reading all these mission reports, she felt that she had lost either way: where her double had made mistakes she hadn’t, or they had results she hadn’t, she felt guilty that _some_ Sam Carter had done it, and _she_ might well have done it herself; where this Sam Carter had avoided mistakes, she felt doubly stupid, because she should have avoided them too.

Time to stop the pity party and get back to work, her dad would say. Searching for his name did turn up a number of reports. She skimmed the dates for the most recent one; that had only been two months ago, but it turned out simply to be a reference to intelligence Jacob Carter and Selmak had previously provided. Back, back, back—there it was, a report that didn’t just _mention_ her dad but...oh, God. The last report with multiple occurrences of her name was from the Alpha Site, where they’d been working on the weapon to defeat Anubis’s Super Soldiers. The soldiers had attacked the site—Sam stopped reading when she saw that her father had died.

Her dad was gone. Her dad was gone, Jack O’Neill was dead, Teal’c had left, and Daniel was missing. Vala was in jail. God, she needed a drink. Preferably alcoholic; she wished she’d taken Landry up on his repeated offer. But she wouldn’t find anything like that on base.

At this point, she would settle for coffee. Sure enough, a coffee maker was right there in her office. She was pretty sure Daniel had a better one, though, and better coffee. She needed more of a break. Would his lab be the same in this universe as it was in her own?

Sam went down a level, nodding to a couple of SFs making the rounds. They smiled in greeting and apparently never even thought to ask her where she was going. She went to the office. It was locked, but her key card would get her in. Indeed, it did.

At first she thought she had the wrong office. She nearly left because there weren’t any artifacts, and the shelves only about half full. But there were boxes, lots of them. Sam walked to one shelf of books with an empty box nearby and gasped. Those were Daniel’s, all right. She turned back to the boxes and opened the nearest one. Books. It was full of books. Daniel’s books.

She continued to check boxes, opening just the ones on the tops of piles, but it was clear enough what was happening here. Daniel had been declared missing, as in her universe—but unlike in her universe, they weren’t holding out hope. They were packing up his office. It would doubtless be reassigned—soon, from the looks of it. Then she looked at some other shelves, and engineering books had already replaced some of Daniel’s language, linguistics, anthropology, religion, and assorted other titles. 

Sam was already out of the office before she remembered the coffee maker. She hadn’t seen it. That was probably for the best. She didn’t want coffee anymore. Her stomach felt far too sour.

The time had moved from oh dark hundred to bright and early; soon the first shift of the day would be coming on. People would probably look for her. She seemed to be in great demand now. She had better finish what she started, fast.

Sam returned to “her” lab and went back to the computer, running a search on any contact with the Tok’ra since Antarctica. She came up virtually empty. Ties seemed to have been cut—not formally, but no one at the SGC had attempted to contact them in quite some time, and the Tok’ra hadn’t contacted the SGC. At least, not according to these records. She was starting to wonder if things were being left out, or if Major Carter didn’t have full access. The Tok’ra were major allies. Surely the SGC would want to know their status!

But there was nothing more she could find, at least not from here. What was Teal’c doing now? He had left shortly after Colonel O’Neill’s death. In her universe, Daniel had convinced Oma to fight Anubis during an ascension, or near-ascension, that never took place in here. With no Replicators to battle and the weapon on Dakara not found, what was Anubis doing, since he was presumably not trapped in an eternal battle with Oma Desala? Or had something else motivated her to fix her own mess at last?

The files offered no answers. The Super Soldiers suffered some decisive defeats, and then there was no further mention of Anubis. Sam was bewildered. How could that be? Had something else happened? Maybe Oma had decided to fight him on her own initiative? Was he simply waiting a better time to launch a new attack? Were the Jaffa free here, or not?

Bewilderment turned slowly to anger as Sam worked her way through the files. Mission reports again were no help. Various memos and policy statements that Major Carter had received provided a clearer picture. With unrest on Earth, the SGC had pulled back. This SGC had far fewer teams, and, as she had learned, the flagship team was headed only by a major. The Alpha Site and Beta Site had been closed. Contacts with the Jaffa had been severed because the SGC feared being dragged into the Jaffa Rebellion (as if they weren’t already involved!); Teal’c had had to make a choice, and he chose to stay with his own people. Contacts with the Tok’ra and Asgard had simply not been pursued. 

The SGC had dwindled. Much of its space had been given over to other branches of the military and government; it was pure luck that Daniel’s office was the same. A few of the offices and labs on their levels were not SGC space at all, and much of the space above them in the Mountain belonged to other agencies. SG-1 occasionally pursued opportunities to procure weapons or minerals useful for weapons. It was not truly a first-contact team any longer, leaving only one designated first contact/diplomatic team.

The Ori, however, were at least as threatening as in her own universe. How was that possible? Vala had never met Daniel; she had certainly never used the communication device.

Sam quickly opened the earliest file she could find on the Ori. If Daniel hadn’t made contact here and the Ori still came, then it wasn’t his fault! How relieved he’d be to hear that if they got him back! When they got him back.

The first report, however, had her heart somewhere around her boots. Daniel and an anthropologist whose name Sam dimly recognized, a Doctor Lindsay, had tried the communication device. Lindsay had suffered a heart attack during their experience in the Ori galaxy and never recovered, dying two days later. She started to read Daniel’s report, but a familiar guilt burned through his precisely chosen words, and she closed the file and turned away from the monitor.

Sam felt nauseous and realized she really needed to eat, as little as she felt like it. She pasted a smile on her face and made her way to the commissary. Oatmeal. That should quell the burning in her gut. Oatmeal to neutralize the acid, then she could get some coffee. On her way to the commissary, she realized she had a lot more digging to do. If the SGC had been cut badly, resources had presumably been diverted to other branches of the military. And now that the Stargate program was public, its technology could be used on Earth, as she had seen last night.

She had hardly begun eating her oatmeal before Major Lorne sat down opposite her with a grin and a far too cheerful, “Good morning!” 

Sam wanted to eat alone, and quickly, and get back to her research. But maybe she could learn some things from him. She returned his greeting.

“So, a busy day with the press?”

She hesitated. “I thought—I hope—a busy day in the lab, with my equipment.”

“Oh, yeah.” He didn’t seem to notice her concern. “I’m sure you’ll have time for that, too. I just thought, it must be really exciting making the rounds: receptions, the press, everything. I mean,” he added, no doubt reading unhappiness on her face, “I’m sure it will get old soon enough. But you get to meet people, get out of the SGC....”

“How long have you been...?”

He stopped to dig into some eggs and bacon. “Stuck here? We don’t really get leave anymore. It’s just been one damn thing after another. They were rolling back the program to focus on security on-planet, and _then_ that damned tablet had to come through with some alien bitch, and the next thing you know we’ve got the Ori in our galaxy, but a whole hell of a lot fewer SGC personnel than we had at our peak.”

“But it looks like SG-1 has hardly had any missions!” Sam exclaimed. 

Lorne looked surprised. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean, I read through some of your Sam Carter’s mission reports....”

“Oh! Oh, you’ve been staying on Earth a lot these past couple, few years,” he said, again stuffing food into his mouth. “She has, I mean. SG-1...we’ve rotated some people in and out since Teal’c left. You went on missions where we thought we might get technology, but we left you in the lab for recon missions that were just to find out where the Ori were, gain intel, that sort of thing.” He added, a little defensively, “We couldn’t risk you! You just saved the whole _planet_ , after all!”

“And Daniel?” she couldn’t help but ask. “I...I went to his office for some coffee, and it’s being packed up!”

Lorne shrugged. “Space is at a premium. Hey, if we get him back, he’ll get his office back, but he’s been gone for almost two months! We waited longer than we would for anyone else.” He obviously expected this last statement to carry some weight. “Major—Colonel—Sam,” he said, leaning forward and putting his fork down. “I want Daniel back too. We need him. But he’s been gone so long—we have to face reality. He’s probably never coming back. He’s either dead or compromised.

“I know we work very differently from the place where you were. But we’ve been in crisis mode for so long now—”

“That you’ve forgotten how to live without it?” she snapped. “I saw last night how you deal with protestors.”

Lorne’s face showed only confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Goa’uld pain sticks? You’re using alien technology against our own people!” She kept her voice down, knowing that many in the commissary, which was rapidly filling, did not know she was not their Major Carter.

“It’s non-lethal,” he said slowly, as if he were trying to see her point. “Beats the hell out of shooting them.”

“Why not just let them protest?”

“Sam, where were you last night when you saw the protestors?” It seemed an honest question, but she felt there was something more behind it. She just wasn’t sure what.

“At a presidential reception.” 

“How close to the president does _your_ secret service allow protestors to get?” He was frowning, obviously interested in the answer.

“Well...I guess we probably wouldn’t let them into a black-tie reception.”

“And where did you see them last night?” 

“It was only one.”

“Where?” he repeated patiently. “How close to the president?”

Sam lowered her head. He had made his point.

Then she looked him in the eye again. “But pain sticks are _torture_! They’re not...crowd control!” she hissed.

“They are when we use them.”

“ _You’ve_ used them?”

He shook his head. He was losing patience. “Not me personally. But I’ve seen these protestors. Sam, they’re nuts! They think _we’re_ the enemy!”

“From their point of view, we _are_ the enemy,” she told him. “We opened the Stargate. We brought the Goa’uld to attack Earth. And then we brought the Ori, didn’t we?”

He nodded, obviously unwillingly. “But _you_ saved the Earth from the Ori, just yesterday, with some help from people who have been with this program for a long time! And people all across the country who made the diversion of energy to Area 51 work. We saved them from the Goa’uld, too! We’ve brought back all kinds of advances! We’ve got beaming technology, advanced aircraft, non-lethal weapons....” He was ticking them off on his fingers.

“Did we—you—bring medical advances? Better cultural understanding? Peace?”

The corners of Lorne’s mouth quirked a little. “Let me guess: you spend too much time talking to Daniel Jackson in your universe, too.” 

“I wouldn’t say too much!” She shouldn’t let that needle her. “He’s a member of your team too, right?”

“Yes, he has been. A valuable member,” Lorne agreed sadly. “And I’m telling you, I would kill to get him back! Look, Sam, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to argue. I just...I don’t think you’re giving us a fair chance. We don’t measure up against what you’re used to, and so we must be wrong. But before we had pain sticks, we used tasers on crowds that got out of control. We tried a weapon that hit them with a wave of sound, but that caused permanent hearing damage. With alien tech, we can break up mobs without killing them. Isn’t that what your people try to do? But sometimes tasers cause heart attacks. Pain sticks are actually safer. We’ve had hardly _any_ heart attacks. No lasting damage. Yeah, it hurts—but that just makes sure they don’t do it again, right?”

She had her mouth open to reply, but he added, “And don’t be fooled. You can call them ‘protestors,’ but that makes them sound like they have a cause. They’re not really _for_ anything. They’re just against everything. Especially us.” He dug back into his eggs.

“The man last night was calling out for freedom. That doesn’t sound like ‘against everything,’” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s always some excuse.”

Well, if he was determined to have the last word, Sam decided, he could have it. She knew the Lorne in her universe hadn’t exactly gotten off on the right foot with SG-1; she had first met him on that that mining planet inhabited by the Unas, where Daniel got so upset that they’d moved artifacts without telling him. But from what she’d read and seen herself, Lorne had really come into his own on Atlantis. He was in a position of responsibility, the leader of an important team, and he’d come through on a number of occasions. He was a valuable member of the Atlantis personnel. And if he was a little narrow-minded, well, she’d met a lot worse people in the military. 

She kept eating oatmeal mechanically. She’d need food to get through the days to come. She wouldn’t allow herself to think in terms of more than _days_ yet, she had already resolved. It might take several, but she would get home. She had to, not only for her own sanity, but because her own Earth needed her. What if the Ori fleet came to her world while she was here?

Alienating the people who already wanted to help her wasn’t the best idea. Until her equipment came back from Area 51, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to get home. Maybe she could learn some more about this place where she might have to live for a few days.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “There’s a lot I don’t know about your world. It looks like mine, it even has a lot of the same people in it, but—well, _you_ don’t seem that different, and General Hammond seems just like mine, but President Landry? In my world, he was a general, and...well, he was very different,” she finished lamely.

“Really? He wasn’t president?” Lorne straightened in his chair. “I can’t imagine anybody else right now, frankly. It does help that he has a lot of military experience. He only retired when he ran for president, I think. Who’s your president?”

“Henry Hayes.”

Lorne shook his head, then laughed. “Oh! I think he ran, but he didn’t get the nomination. I’m not sure, though; I might be thinking of some other guy.”

Sam saw her chance. “Hey, do you think I could catch up on newscasts? Recent ones, mostly, to know who’s who and what’s going on in the world.”

“Sure!” He seemed even more eager to cover over their differences than she was. “I can help you get set up to watch some things. That’s a good idea. You wouldn’t want to make any big goofs when you’re talking to reporters.”

That was true. Landry firmly maintained that the people needed a hero, and the thought of people coming through from alternate universes was just too scary, so she would have to be Major Samantha Carter a little longer. 

Major Samantha Carter. Ex-wife of one Rodney McKay. She kept that in the back of her mind. That connection might prove useful. McKay was a jerk, but he was a brilliant jerk.

***

Major Lorne made good on his offer, finding some media people, probably from the White House portion of the SGC, to give her video of some of the most recent newscasts. He also gave her a box with a stack of hard-copy mission reports. She thanked him sincerely, but she was glad to be left alone.

As intent as she was on her self-assigned mission, when another anonymous airman—or the same one as yesterday?—came a couple of hours later to tell her that she had an appearance to make, she was grateful for the interruption. So far, she had seen little but grief, delivered as if it were good news, with a “patriotic” slant that sickened her. Americans putting down a “fifth column” in their own country. The successful infiltration of a group opposed to President Landry had resulted in scores of arrests of people called “terrorists,” though the report did not specify any weapons found with them.

She asked for a dress uniform, but she was told that a dress had been left in her quarters for her. She wondered again why she was being asked to wear civilian clothes. Had this American military been so oppressive on their own soil that a hero had to appear out of uniform so that she wouldn’t be too threatening? Or did they want to make her seem more ‘feminine’ for some reason? At least they had some boots she liked.

She thought she looked pretty good in her dress blues, to tell the truth, but she knew some men didn’t agree. She thought back for a moment with a smile to her first meeting with then-Colonel O’Neill. He seemed more comfortable the next time they met; was it because she was out of her dress uniform and in BDUs? Or just because he’d had some time to adjust to the idea of a woman scientist? Or maybe because she was just doing her job instead of insisting she could do it?

The smile left her face as she remembered there was no Colonel or General O’Neill here. If she didn’t find a way home, she’d never see him again. Lorne seemed sincere, but God knew if these people were making what she would consider a serious attempt to recover their own Daniel, and Teal’c had been gone for years. Vala wasn’t the same person at all. But Cam...he was still around somewhere. She’d have to look him up. 

She couldn’t help but wonder what Major Sam Carter’s role had been in all of this. Had she had anything to do with turning alien weaponry against the people of Earth? Had she helped, or had she argued against it? Or had she just classified it “not my problem”? Sam remembered that journalist who had been killed in front of Jack O’Neill. She knew the Colonel had been deeply troubled, as surely as she had seen him bury it. He felt responsible. But he hadn’t been able to do anything. Was this Sam Carter in the same position, or worse? 

Sam remembered going through all this before, when what Cam called “SG-1 in Black” came through a rift they opened and tried to steal Atlantis’s ZPM. Her teammates had pretty well convinced her that time that that Sam Carter was not _this_ Sam Carter, that Sam made her own moral choices, and better ones. But how many Samantha Carters making the ends justify the means did it take until she recognized that part of herself? She knew she had it; she just wasn’t sure how strong it was. In some universes, that part was very strong indeed.

With a few minutes before she had to leave, Sam found herself in front of a screen again, watching new footage with horror. She had to know just how bad things were on this planet.

General Hammond suddenly appeared. “The President's people are looking for you,” he told her.

“I was just on my way out,” she answered mechanically, still looking at the screen.

“They've been getting a lot of requests from the media for you to do some sit-down interviews,” he continued. “Apparently, you've become quite the celebrity.” A smile crinkled his face; he was pleased for her.

Sam looked at the man again. She had known General Hammond since she was a girl. He might not be exactly the same man, but he seemed very similar. Maybe he could help her understand what had gone wrong on this Earth.

“Have you seen this?” she asked him, gesturing. “It _was_ an Irish village. It was just bombed by American F-302s.”

She expected some of the compassion she had seen from the general over the years. Instead, she heard a defensive, “At the request of the Irish Prime Minister. That ‘village,’ as you call it, was in fact a training camp for terrorists bent on overthrowing several European governments.”

Sam hid her surprise and disappointment. Of course he had to toe the official line. But surely he couldn’t be happy about the situation. She walked to the box and tapped the reports. “You know, I've also been going over several mission reports. You abandoned the Alpha Site.” She looked closely for signs of regret. “You cut ties with the Jaffa. You pulled back on almost everything!” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusing.

“We didn't have a lot of choice! We devoted our full resources to planetary defense!” Now he was upset. Surely his defensiveness came in part from the knowledge she was right? 

“Well, that's understandable,” she conceded. “But now that the Ori attack has failed, does that mean you'll be getting back out there?” She was afraid to put too much hope into her words, and she couldn’t stop the bitterness that spilled out when he told her that the decision hadn’t been made: “Of course not. I mean, why be hasty, especially when those 302s are so handy for putting down your political enemies?”

“You know, I understand you're coming to see certain things about this world that you don't like. To tell the truth, we don't much like it either,” he said, shaking his head, and Sam desperately wanted to believe him. “But you weren't here for the riots. You didn't see American citizens shooting each other over food, water, and gasoline! Hank Landry brought us back from the brink of chaos!” His voice rose and his jaw tightened.

“That was three years ago!” she shot back.

“The threat is still out there!” he shouted.

“That's the problem! It always will be!” She rushed from the room, cursing her own stupidity even more than Hammond’s blindness. That wasn’t the way to win support. She was letting her own fears and exhaustion rule her.

She needed to think more carefully about her interactions with people, since she was on her own here. She knew interpersonal relations weren’t her strongest suit. What would Daniel have done?

As she waited at the elevator and gave the question some serious thought, she remembered Daniel yelling at people. Daniel yelling at a Jack O’Neill who wanted to take the military way out. Daniel even yelling at Hammond occasionally, maybe kind of like she just had. 

Sam relaxed a little. Maybe she had just done what Daniel would have done. He wasn’t always right; he wasn’t always effective. But he usually outlasted people, and wore them down, and the good ones generally came over to his side. She might need patience, and she wasn’t very good at that where people were concerned. This time, though, she had the advantage of being certain she was right. Things didn’t have to be this way. Maybe she could give a fresh perspective to those in power.

Or maybe, she thought for just a moment, it was better to be like Vala. To say the things you had to say and not worry what people thought about you. Of course, she couldn’t help but think, half the things that came out of Vala’s mouth aimed just to keep people off the track, to keep them off balance and prevent them from knowing her too well. She couldn’t ever be like Vala. But this SGC could really use a Vala of its own. Maybe not the one Area 51 had in detention, but one more like Sam’s friend.

***

Sam couldn’t believe a few hours later how relieved she was to be going to see _Rodney McKay._ But anything was better than what she had just been doing. First she had had to meet with an aide who briefed her on her schedule of appearances and provided what looked like briefing folders. Apparently Lorne’s request for news had caused some alarm, and someone, maybe even Landry himself, certainly thought it best that Sam be able to pretend she was from this universe. But the contents weren’t quite the briefings she was used to, she discovered as she quickly flipped through. They were talking points, with a little information but very definite slants about how she was supposed to feel about her government (good), the state of the world (dangerous, but under control), the galaxy (very dangerous, good thing we have defense), and the universe (when she got to a folder suggesting that American faith in God—a very Christian God—had saved the planet, she smacked the folders shut and handed them back without a word). 

Before she knew it, she was at another press conference, surrounded by reporters who barely seemed able to ask the only kinds of questions she wanted to answer. The aide had tried to drill her on talking points, explaining they didn’t want teleprompters because this wasn’t a speech but Q&A. 

She kept her scientific explanations vague and basic, but even so, most of the press seemed twitchy. Then they all started yelling questions at once: she heard one asking whether she prayed before she threw the switch (switch? Did he imagine a big, Frankenstein’s lab type of knife switch?), another asking whether she was seeing anyone (as in hallucinating? was her first thought). 

She finally managed to pick out a reasonable question and answer it. “Yes, we can use the device again if we have to.” 

This was worse than meeting the press in the Gate room. There were far fewer of them there. She tried to keep smiling, but she wanted to hide. More than that, she wanted to get back to her work, and back to her home.

The questions continued. Was it true she would be promoted for this? Was there anyone she’d like to thank? Could the Ori use cloaks or phase-shifting technology and surprise Earth?

“No, we don’t believe the Ori ships have either phase-shifting or cloaking capabilities, so we will have warning before another attack, if they try one.”

She wasn’t keeping up with the questions at all. She looked pleadingly around for help, trying to smile all the same. Then someone right in front of her shouted, “What would your father say? Was he a big influence on your career?” Another reporter picked up the questioning: “Did he help you get your post at the SGC?”

The smile froze on her face, and the questions turned to gibberish. No—they’d already been gibberish, most of them. She just couldn’t listen to them any longer. Reading that her father had died here too, just at a different time and in a different way here, had brought her father’s death back to her. She’d told General O’Neill that she’d gotten more time with him, that she was okay, and she’d meant it, even. At the time. 

At that point the aide who had handed her all the folders announced that Major Carter had answered enough questions for the moment and led her away.

Sam knew she must look dazed. “My father’s dead,” she told the woman who had pulled her aside.

The aide, whose name she couldn’t remember, frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Was it recent?”

“Yes—no.” Sam felt lost—and stupid. “It’s just—it was a, a couple of years ago, but I didn’t expect anyone to ask, and....”

The woman nodded with a look of genuine understanding. “It sneaks up on you sometimes. I know. My mother....” 

Seeing the aide act human for a moment signaled her that now was her chance. Sam nodded sympathetically but didn’t waste time asking about the woman’s mother. “I’m...sorry. Look, I need some time.... I need a break. A little time to get away, without handlers, without press....”

The woman met her eyes and nodded slowly. “Okay. I think I can help. I work with the press a lot; I know this building pretty well. There’s a back stairwell. I’ll call a cab to meet you in the rear without anyone noticing. Here, I’ll show you.” 

The aide walked her down two or three corridors to an “Exit” sign. She pushed the door open, and Sam saw a stairwell with an outside door.

“No alarm?”

“You can only get in this way with a security card, which I’m guessing you don’t have. You’ll have to come back in the front. But you can go out this way.”

Sam thanked her and left quickly, almost feeling guilty for taking advantage of the woman’s concern—but not quite.

She needed to see Rodney McKay, and she didn’t want any other audience. Dealing with him was more than enough.

***

Sam wasn’t surprised to be kept waiting in McKay’s office; she was only surprised that she was shown into it at once. It was a sophisticated-looking office, well decorated, with artifacts, with sculptures, with photographs, with...taste. Was this Rodney McKay so different? Or did a rich McKay just pay someone to make his office look nice? One whole wall was a bookcase with several sets of books.

Suddenly he was there, and she really wasn’t prepared yet, especially when he started in with, “Well, well, well. If it isn't the toast of Washington!” 

What could she do but thank him for meeting with her? She had to play nice. Surely this Rodney McKay was enough like the other to like her (or, she feared, lust after her). Flatter him, give him a challenge—he’d do it.

He was wearing glasses, which she couldn’t remember ever seeing on him before, and a casual but expensive-looking dark shirt and pants. She started listening again.

“...We’re still friends, aren't we?” He seemed a little uncertain. He _did_ seem very like the McKay she knew. “Saw you on TV...well, recorded you, actually...not that I-I watched it more than once...I mean, I recorded it in order to...watch you once....” He managed to stop blithering and asked rather stiffly, “How can I help you?”

Straight to business. That, she could do. “Well, this is going to come as a bit of a shock, but I'm not who you think I am.”

“Oh my God, you're a lesbian! Is that what you're trying to tell me?” He looked horrified.

Okay, _this_ she couldn’t do. “What? No! _McKay_!” Actually, she could believe that response. That would mean he wasn’t at fault for whatever had gone wrong with their—his—marriage. How could someone have such a huge ego and so much insecurity at the same time? That answered the “how much like the Rodney McKay I know?” question.

“Well, no, I-I-just...I think...I thought, uh...umm.”

Self-centered idiot. Why had she come here?

Oh, right. Because he was an idiot with people, but not with physics. She choked back various possible responses and finally told him, “I’m from an alternate universe.”

“Huh.”

Not the response she’d hoped. “Your Samantha Carter was working on an experiment when she inadvertently pulled me in.”

“This some kind of a joke? It's very funny. Who put you up to this?” He walked around behind his desk as if to protect himself with the furniture—or the computer.

Oh, God. This wasn’t fair. She had played a few practical jokes in her life. She hadn’t played any on McKay, though. She’d never had the chance, or she might have gotten him good, although his assignment to Russia would be hard to beat. She had to convince him. She wasn’t even sure how much time she had before she was summoned back to those god-awful press conferences.

She fired straight and fast; any dancing around the point would just convince him further that this was some kind of prank. “This is not a joke, McKay. In my reality, you're a key member of a team of international scientists and explorers based in the Pegasus Galaxy. You go on dangerous adventures. You deal with high level alien technology.”

“Hmm. Sounds like I'm a chump.” He smiled, clearly unbelieving. “Nice try, Sam, but, uh, even if travel between universes _was_ possible, the likelihood of you surviving is, uh....”

“I was in a force shield when I was pulled through.” He looked straight at her, suddenly taking her more seriously. “Your Samantha Carter was killed in the same accident that brought me here. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but I don't have a lot of time, and I need your help.”

A shadow crossed his face, and McKay was silent for a long moment. He really did care about her, then? Or was he just trying to get his head around the existence of alternate universes? That wouldn’t account for the sadness creeping over him, the slump of the shoulders.

“She’s gone?” he finally said, just above a whisper. “My Sam—I mean, not _my_ Sam, but—you know what I mean.... I’m never gonna see her again?”

Sam was never comfortable with her own griefs. She sure as hell wasn’t up to dealing with Rodney McKay’s. She nodded.

He turned away. That enormous ego—had he maybe thought one day she’d come back? Or did he just genuinely care for her still?

“Rodney?” she asked softly.

“Wha—what?” He turned back abruptly, almost as if he’d forgotten she was there.

“I didn’t just come here to....”

“Oh! Oh, right. You...you said something about needing my help?” Apparently he couldn’t decide if that was a question or a statement, and his voice did something funny at the end.

“You....” Sam took a deep breath. “You’re....” Oh, for God’s sake, now was not the time to choke. “You’re a brilliant scientist. At least in my universe. And I think...I need your help to get back. You see, your Sam Carter was taking energy from various universes, doing an experiment much like one that my Rodney McKay—well, not _mine_ , not in any sense of the word,” she added hastily when she saw his eyebrows shoot up, “the Rodney McKay in my universe was doing experiments like hers, and I figured you’d be able to help me reverse the process. You see....”

He held up a finger. “Okay, you need to slow down. You're telling me my ex-wife is dead even though you look exactly like her...except for the hair, which is nice, by the way....” What was wrong with him? Nothing that wasn’t wrong in her own universe, she was pretty sure. “On top of that, you're from another universe, and you need me to help you get back?”

“In my reality, you successfully designed and built a bridge between parallel universes...with a little help from your sister.”

“Really?” He seemed surprised. “What, so, uh, she and I get along in your universe?” 

“Not exactly,” Sam had to say.

His face fell. 

“Anyway,” she rushed on, “I've been trying my best to recreate your calculations, but I keep coming up short. I mean, I didn’t do the original calculations myself, and I never even had time to go through them thoroughly. That's why I'm here.”

“I have not done a lot of theoretical physics, lately, okay?” His hand slashed through the air. “I mean, these days I tend to do a little more of the, ah, buying and selling of companies!”

Remember the game plan: play to the ego, she told herself. “The Rodney McKay I know wouldn't back down from a challenge. He is one of the most forthright, courageous, and...selfless men I have ever met.”

He was really pleased—for a moment. Then he looked at her closely, trying to read her. “Aw, you're making that up, aren't you?” Maybe this McKay wasn’t a _complete_ idiot with people.

She could hear the hurt in his voice, but it was best to pretend she couldn’t. He didn’t like to be vulnerable—except when he was being a hypochondriac. “Most of it, yeah.”

“Oh. Okay, I'll help you.”

Where the hell did that come from? She smiled anyway. She wasn’t sure she’d convinced him, exactly. He was curious. He was...challenged. He didn’t want to admit there was anything he couldn’t do.

“Okay, I don’t have the information right here, and...well, it’s classified. I don’t know about your security clearance—”

“The best.” He grinned. “The top. Your buddy Landry? I know him personally. I do a lot of business with the government. And I made some donations....”

Her lip curled in spite of her efforts. Be nice! she yelled at herself. “Yeah. Well, then clearance shouldn’t be a problem. And some of the work might benefit the SGC. I mean, your Carter’s way of getting energy wasn’t really safe, as it turns out, but that was, well, a fluke, at least this time.” Keep it positive, she told herself. Play up the benefits.

He frowned. “How many universes are there? Because it only takes _one_ universe where you’re shielded and playing around with phase-shifting technology to give the person at the other end a _really bad day_.”

“Yeah. Good point,” she had to admit. She’d already thought of that, had already decided that she was never going to play around with pulling energy from other universes that way; it might be safer than what the McKays had done on Atlantis, but she wouldn’t call it safe _._

She hadn’t expected him to reach that conclusion so quickly, though. But then again, his own safety might be at risk when he got involved. God, she hated having to calculate personalities. They didn’t work neatly. That wasn’t real math.

“You just suggested the benefit thing to get me to cooperate,” he said coolly.

“Well, not so much you....”

“...as whoever I’d have to get my security clearance from.”

She nodded, a little embarrassed.

“Okay. I can live with that. But you’ve gotta be honest with me about the risks, and anything else you know. I can’t have you withholding data.”

She nodded again. He stared at her. She rolled her eyes. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said, making the appropriate gesture.

McKay’s face wrinkled up. “You remind me so much of my wife—and then you don’t. Weird. This is gonna—gonna take some getting used to.” His voice cracked a little, and he hurried to sit down at his desk.

Sam wasn’t giving him a chance to grieve. She didn’t know what it was like to lose your ex-spouse, but she supposed losing Jonas Hansen was close. That had hurt, surprisingly. Seeing him again, even knowing he’d really gone over the edge, far over, and taken other people with him—seeing him again had thrown her off, and she botched her assignment. She’d felt strangely relieved when he died, not only because the whole mess he had made was over but also because he would never have to stand trial, he’d never be locked up. Despite the years since their brief engagement, despite the madness, despite the thought that his death was really best for everyone, even Jonas, it had hurt.

Rodney must hurt, but it was a hurt that he didn’t want to share, and she didn’t need any part of it. She had enough of her own.

So she spent some time talking him through some of the highlights, giving him ideas to work with and references to see if he could find, and then she had to run back to her handlers. They had no doubt missed her by now.

“Don’t tell them you’re going to help me yet,” she asked. “Let me...feel through things, see if I can smooth the way a little.”

“Sure,” he said, now so engrossed in his screen he didn’t even look up—until the last moment, when she looked back and saw him watching her go, and then he turned away at once when their eyes met.

***

The discomfort of being around Rodney McKay faded as she took a cab back, found her bewildered Air Force handlers and said she was ready to go back, and returned to base. Uneasiness never entirely left her, however. She couldn’t help but notice that the streets were not as busy as Colorado Springs normally should be. Gasoline rationing? People moving away from the SGC? Or fear? She did see more bicyclists than usual, but instead of the latest racing numbers or mountain bikes, they were on rusty old bikes.

The view through the car windows was disquieting. She’d rather be somewhere entirely new than somewhere that should be familiar but seemed just a little off at every turn.

It could be worse, she reminded herself. She was safe for now—and she’d have help getting back home. And the SGC felt almost like home.

Sam’s spirits lifted as the elevator inside Cheyenne Mountain descended. She could focus on her work again, and get back to her real friends—to Teal’c, to a still free-spirited Vala, to Cam—well, most of her real friends, anyway. Maybe she would even return to find they had a lead on Daniel! She hadn’t been able to do anything on that front anyway, so at least her absence wouldn’t hurt the SGC’s efforts in that way.

As the elevator stopped on the level for the iso labs and Sam got out, she thought that this Bill Lee seemed very much like her own—smart but awkward, such a geek that he made Daniel look like Tom Cruise. Well, maybe not Tom Cruise. Cruise had been weird lately. Who was the epitome of cool now? She needed to see more movies.

As she approached the lab, she called out, “Good news, Bill! We've got somebody to help with the...” She might have finished her sentence, but she wasn’t really sure; her brain shut down momentarily at the sight of the completely empty lab. No Bill. Worse, no equipment whatsoever. Just the burn marks that they couldn’t quite clean off the floor and parts of the walls.

By the time she reached the briefing room, Sam had built up a full head of steam. She came in fast and didn’t waste time on greetings, though she managed to keep her tone level: “Where's my equipment?”

“Still at Area 51.” Landry was unfazed. 

“It was supposed to be returned once the Ori fleet was gone. I need it for the defense of my own world!”

“I'm sorry, the timing's not good for you to go back just yet,” he replied coolly. We'll revisit your situation after the plebiscite.”

What the hell? “What plebiscite?”

Landry’s omnipresent chief of staff Charlie filled her in: “Last year, Congress was forced to cancel the mid-term elections because of widespread unrest.” Oh, God. She hadn’t realized things had gotten that bad. “It was supposed to be temporary, but when things didn't improve, we voted to suspend elections indefinitely. Now it comes down to a simple yes or no vote to keep the President in office.”

“You're a member of my team!” Landry said cheerily. “The woman who saved the world. Do you have any idea what kind of political capital that's worth?”

Political capital? “I won't help you subvert democracy.”

Landry was suddenly grim. “This world is dangling by a thread, Colonel. And unlike you, the rest of us will never have the luxury of leaving for someplace better when things get tough.” He pushed up from the table. “This is our home. And we'll make the best of it.”

He left the room. He walked out on her. She couldn’t believe it. She looked to Hammond for help, but Hammond looked away. 

Sam was damned if she was going to stand there looking lost in front of these men. She strode back out of the room quickly. She needed to talk to Bill, at least get her computer back so she could do _some_ work. 

A check of the labs failed to turn up Bill. Sam hated to ask for help from these people; she wasn’t sure whom she could trust. Maybe Lorne would at least give it to her straight. But where would she find him? She didn’t know where his office was. She realized she didn’t even know where Hammond’s office was. Hammond wouldn’t meet her eyes a few minutes ago. He knew what Landry was doing was wrong. Maybe she could work on him.

Sam felt stupid wandering the corridors blindly this way, but she didn’t slow down, didn’t want anyone to know how lost she was. Hammond’s office must be near the president’s suite.

There was that damned chief of staff again. She walked past, ignoring him and even speeding up a little to look like she knew where she was going, but he called out to her.

“Going somewhere?” She stopped. “Maybe to see your friend, Doctor McKay?”

Sam turned slowly, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of startling her. “You had me followed,” she said, betraying no surprise.

“He _is_ a wealthy high-tech industrialist. And I'm sure if anyone outside of this base had the resources to help you get back to your universe, he'd be the one.” Absolutely true, and Sam should have seen this coming. “But he also derives a significant portion of his income from defense contracts, and some would argue he's a likely target for an anti-trust investigation.”

Had the man no ethics at all? “You'd blackmail him to keep him from helping me.”

“Just play your part, and everything will be fine.” Then he walked out on her.

She told herself it was a good thing he walked away; she could get in real trouble if she hit him. My God, how had things reached this point?

Sam really couldn’t deal with these people right now. She couldn’t work, even as her own SGC might need her equipment—her planetary defense system!—at any time. That in itself frustrated her enough to send her over the edge. But she didn’t even have any friends here with whom she could speak.

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t do any work, but maybe she could make a better connection with someone. She’d mishandled things completely with General Hammond. But they still had much in common. Surely this George Hammond had also been Jacob Carter’s friend? The time lines were similar enough....

In fact, she could ask General Hammond about her father’s death. She had stopped reading too soon because she wasn’t prepared to wade through any more reports in words she could have used detailing things that she hadn’t done herself but might as well have. The thought of her father’s death in this universe kept coming back to her. She needed to know more.

And though she instantly felt guilty for thinking it, she knew it could only increase Hammond’s sympathy for her that she’d asked about how her father died.

After a little more pointless walking, Sam finally asked an airman to point her to General Hammond’s office. The surprised woman not only pointed, she took Sam there herself, eyebrows raised the whole three minutes it took to get there, but no questions asked. This airman didn’t know that this Sam Carter didn’t belong in this universe. Well, raising questions about her status here wouldn’t hurt her. Sam knew she couldn’t tell people what had happened, but letting little clues fall...no one could blame her for that. And if whispers around base made everything a little more uncomfortable for the people at the top, all the better.

The general wasn’t in his office, but an aide in adjoining office came and assured her he’d be back soon. The aide looked familiar, but it took a long moment to come up with the name.

“Satterfield?” Sam asked in disbelief.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“You—um—I...I thought you were in the field.”

Satterfield looked at her as if she were crazy. Good. A little more of that wouldn’t hurt. Get some people to pay attention to her, maybe realize something was very wrong, even if she wasn’t authorized to tell the truth about her identity. “Major, I lost my leg—you—you came to see me in the infirmary. You and Doctor Jackson, you said....” The hurt on her face was all too clear as Satterfield looked down towards the floor.

Sam felt torn between cursing her own insensitivity and gratitude that she had a chance to make her own oddness more apparent. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I...” She couldn’t help but look down at Satterfield’s leg. Satterfield was in BDUs and boots; Sam couldn’t even tell which leg was prosthetic. 

Satterfield looked around quickly. “Ma’am?” Her voice was very low. “What’s going on? I mean, if you can’t tell me....” She gestured Sam into her office. “But if you can....”

Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, and again she meant it. She kept her voice low even though she really couldn’t afford to say anything. “I...hope in the end it will all come out, but I can’t tell you.... Let’s just say that I.... Pretend I have partial amnesia, or something, if it helps.”

Satterfield nodded and looked like she wanted to ask more, but she didn’t.

Sam sat down in the chair and nodded to Satterfield to sit. “So how long...?”

“Almost three years. The riots were so bad that they reassigned some of us to homeland security, and....” Satterfield swallowed. 

“You lost your leg here on Earth?” Sam couldn’t help but ask.

“Right here in Colorado. They sent me up to Denver, where the riots....” Satterfield looked away, but then back at Sam. “They offered me a medical discharge, but I wanted to stay and help, and this...the SGC is my home. So I was very grateful when General Hammond made me his aide.” 

Sam started to say that Hammond was a good man, but then she remembered she wasn’t sure about this George Hammond, so she just nodded.

“There’s no word on Doctor Jackson yet, is there?” Satterfield blurted out.

Sam shook her head. “No. I wish there were.”

“He’ll come back,” the younger woman said hopefully. “He always comes back.”

A tight smile was the best that Sam could manage. The silence was starting to grow uncomfortable when Sam thought to add, “I’m counting on seeing him again.”

That didn’t break the silence for long, and Sam was very grateful when Satterfield rose to her feet again, smoothly, and Sam turned to see General Hammond. He had been walking past but stopped when he saw her.

Sam was glad to feel that most of the anger had flowed out of her during her few minutes’ wait, and she gratefully accompanied General Hammond into his own little office.

She looked around the cramped room filled with filing cabinets and a small desk; there was one chair on either side, and he quickly invited her to sit. She did see a couple of familiar family photos.

“Colonel Carter,” Hammond started briskly, “if you’ve come to me about President Landry’s decision—”

“No, sir. I—” she cut him off, then stopped.

“Then what...?” He leaned forward.

Sam took a deep breath. “My father,” she said. “I saw a report that said he was dead, and I stopped reading, but now I really need to know....” She trailed off as a mix of sorrow and puzzlement came over Hammond’s features. She didn’t know how to explain that she couldn’t stand to read any more reports, alone in that lab that looked like hers but really wasn’t.

“Oh.” Hammond seemed puzzled. “Is he alive in your universe?”

She shook her head. “But he died...later. We had—he had another year. He died two years ago in my universe, fighting—” she remembered in time not to mention the Replicators and especially Dakara—“he died here a year earlier, it seems.” She cursed herself inside. Her wavering wasn’t even manipulation; her voice was breaking all on its own. That wasn’t the person she wanted to be, especially not right now. Her dad never wanted her to cry.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Hammond said gently, “but I’m glad he had a little more time in your world.” That was more like the man she knew, as was the little smile. “And went out fighting, you said?”

“Yeah,” Sam answered. “It’s...a long story. Things...I hoped that since things were different in this universe, he wouldn’t have died.”

The smile was gone again. “Well, I can tell you he went out fighting in this universe too.” His face hardened. “We were betrayed. We were attacked on the Alpha Site. We lost several people there in the initial attack; Jacob died defending a new weapon which we have since used with great success.” 

“He wasn’t—he wasn’t defending me?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

Hammond frowned deeply. “You weren’t even on the planet at the time,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“Oh, God.” She let out a breath. Did that make it more, or less her fault? She should have realized—she hadn’t been reading one of her own reports at the time. She’d been opening all the reports she could find with her father’s name and searching for mentions of him, and she hadn’t seen any mention of herself; she hadn’t even read enough to realize it wasn’t her writing.

“You were on Earth, working on the same project, and had been scheduled to return to the site later that day with some more equipment.” He shook his head again, looking at his desk for a moment. “I remember it all too well.” He raised his face again and looked at her steadily. “Needless to say, we were very glad we didn’t lose you as well! But your father protected the people who kept the prototype weapon safe and ultimately used it to destroy their attackers.”

It wasn’t as if she had kept her father alive on the Alpha Site in her own universe. He just hadn’t been that badly hurt then. Not everything in this universe depended on Sam’s choices, it seemed. Some things just played out differently. She didn’t know how much responsibility was hers, or even her counterpart’s. Should that make her feel better, or worse? 

Daniel would say she shouldn’t feel guilty about what someone else with her name did. Daniel, who still couldn’t hear the word “sarcophagus” without flinching; Daniel, who had been seeing Mackenzie ever since his attempt to clear Teal’c and save Teal’c’s friend Krista had given the Trust weapons they’d used indiscriminately against Jaffa, Goa’uld, Tok’ra. Should she do what Daniel _did_ , or what he _said_?

“I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” said the General, leaning forward. “I wish I had some better news. Jacob was not only a good man, he was a good friend.”

He wished he could help. Sam heard the unspoken message. 

Sam thanked Hammond and took her leave. He seemed troubled, wanting to say more. And she wanted to stay and talk to him; she could use a sympathetic ear. But she knew his first loyalty must be to the president. And more than a sympathetic ear, she needed frustrated sympathy—someone who might fight for her when the time came. When had she become so...conniving? Was that the right word? Did that make like the Carter who had come from another universe to steal her Atlantis’s ZPM? A Carter who used sympathy to manipulate others? Her steps faltered. She would do what it took to get home—and to get an effective defense for the Earth back to her Earth. What did that make her?

Oh, God! What if Landry with his damned plebiscite finally let her go back but wouldn’t let her take the device? She shook her head. Impossible. She would do whatever it took to get not only herself but that equipment back home before the Ori fleet came. Things were playing out differently here; the Ori fleet had come here sooner than they would in her universe.

That settled, she found herself thinking of this world’s future. Sam wondered again if her counterpart had helped with martial law, merely tolerated it, or been so concerned with her work that she didn’t much care. Or maybe, just maybe, she had pushed against it, had urged something different. 

She couldn’t really ask, unless she found someone who agreed with her views. And she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. She knew she wasn’t responsible for what another version of herself had done. She’d had this conversation many times before, with her team, her friends. No sense in dwelling on the past, anyway, especially not an alternate past she’d never lived.

This Sam Carter might not be responsible for how it got this way, but she sure as hell seemed to be shoring it up, showing up at a reception with Landry and doing those press conferences. She had a lot to do, and she’d need help. McKay would be good on the technical end, but she had a lot of other things to worry about. 

Sam knew exactly which teammates would be good at which aspects, too. She hardly had to think about what she’d be asking Daniel to do, what she’d have Teal’c do—hell, she wouldn’t have to ask anything. She’d have to restrain Daniel, probably. Teal’c would just know. And Vala would be so useful, keeping people off balance and getting information at the same time—none of them had ever figured out exactly how Vala got so much classified information before she was cleared to join the SGC. She seemed just to absorb it somehow, except for the times she actually showed up with folders in her hands that she wasn’t supposed to have. Mitchell? Cam could be the straight-up officer when needed, respectfully following the chain of command and persuasively arguing with his superiors. At other times, he surprised her with his sudden recklessness and willingness to break the rules.

But with Jack dead here, Daniel missing, Teal’c out of touch, and Vala in jail, she had one team member left: Mitchell. Surely no one could fault her for looking up an old Air Force friend. And maybe this Mitchell could do what she would have hers do back home.

***

It wasn’t until the next day she could get out to where Mitchell now lived, and after a short meeting with him, she couldn’t wait to get out of the building. She stumbled out of the rickety elevator in Mitchell’s apartment building. God, she’d suspected from the address, and then from the outside of the building, but this.... She couldn’t imagine _her_ Cameron Mitchell ever, _ever_ giving up like that. If she’d needed confirmation she was alone on this Earth, she had it now. 

She also had a plausible reason to appear to cooperate with the administration’s propaganda effort. A quick phone call, and dear old Charlie—did the man even have a last name?—believed she had been frightened into cooperation.

Maybe it was just as well she couldn’t talk with this universe’s Daniel and Teal’c. She might find that they had sold out—she stopped, berating herself for even thinking it. Teal’c had gotten clear of the Earth’s insanity when it started. He hadn’t compromised. Daniel? Well, like her own counterpart, he had stayed on at the SGC, working with the administration. And she couldn’t afford to worry about his exact role there. Without Daniel and Teal’c, she’d have to be responsible for everything herself. She’d have to be her own spokesperson, her own moral guide—and she’d have to watch her own back, which was damned near impossible. Damn, damn, damn. She could have used General O’Neill’s help, too. Not just to watch her back, either. He was much more creative at cursing than she was.

***

Even Sam was surprised at how fast the wheels of the press turned, and she found herself the next day being prepped for a major national news telecast. She really shouldn’t have had Lorne find those news programs for her, she reflected while an aide to the chief of staff quizzed her. The Powers That Be apparently wanted to make certain she could talk intelligently about the SGC while not screwing up and naming the wrong president or the wrong general or the Pegasus Galaxy. It might have been better if she did make mistakes, if the truth about who she was did come out.

And wasn’t an aide to the chief of staff essentially an aide to an aide? Who was this person? She couldn’t keep track of the people she was meeting, and she realized she wasn’t even trying. She didn’t want to be around long enough to call anyone by name.

The briefing was annoying, but it gave her something to do while she started what she expected would be daily visits to General Hammond and to the President (if she could see him—his chief of staff if she couldn’t, or maybe even in addition) to persuade them to bring her equipment back from Area 51. Bill Lee had promised to work on them too, but Sam didn’t have great confidence in Bill’s people skills.

At least for this interview they had given Sam Major Carter’s dress blues. She felt more confident, more like herself, properly dressed.

Being interviewed by Julia Donovan felt surreal. Meeting her again was an uncomfortable reminder of Sam’s previous television appearance, when she helped cover up the existence of aliens. The SGC ruined Alec Colson’s reputation and his life on Earth, and she had helped. She still thought it was the necessary thing to do under the circumstances: if anything, hearing about the riots that resulted from the revelations of the Stargate and enemy aliens made her more firmly convinced than ever that her government had to control information very carefully, and reveal the existence of the program at some peaceful time—if they ever had one again. That didn’t make it the right thing to do.

Did this universe’s Sam Carter feel as justified when her president declared martial law as she did when she went on the air to ruin Colson? Did that Sam feel justified when the military used alien tech to put down civilian protest? Did they use alien tech right away, or did they slowly move from cracking down to martial law to zats and pain sticks?

But when Sam found herself in the studio, wearing a mike, with bright, hot lights on her, watching the crew count down to live broadcast, the doubts faded. She couldn’t control a past that wasn’t even her own, but she could do something in the present.

Sam was a little surprised at how calm she was, given what she planned to do, and that she didn’t know what the outcome would be. How would Landry react? And his people? If she played her cards right, if reaction to what she said was positive, the president could feel he had no choice but to take her advice and pretend he’d meant to do it all along. She couldn’t help but worried that if she played her cards wrong, any goodwill she had won might be lost—and with it, her chances of returning home with the phase-shifting device.

The interview started easily enough, with very brief background. Sam knew the interview might be short, and that viewers’ attention spans could be even shorter, so as soon as she had a chance to mention her role as presidential advisor, she made her points: quietly, reasonably, convincingly (she hoped). 

She could tell her mention of diplomatic relations and civil liberties took the newswoman by surprise; “really?” was hardly a considered follow-up. But Donovan quickly recovered: “Does the President welcome this kind of input from his military advisors?”

Sam smiled warmly; this was exactly what she wanted. She turned to the live camera. “Well, he wouldn't be much of a president if he wasn't at least willing to listen to other opinions. I mean, while I understand how we got to where we are today, I think it's time to reassess the situation.”

She turned enough to see that Donovan seemed to be stiffening. The journalist did not look happy, but she kept her demeanor professional. 

Sam forged on: “The people of this country need to understand that they are in control of their government, not the other way around.” She turned from Julia’s disbelieving face to the camera. “It's your responsibility as citizens of this country to demand the freedoms that have been taken away from you, demand accountability for why they were withheld in the first—“

Suddenly Julia was touching her arm. “Major, as much as admire what you're trying to do...they cut us off.”

Sam realized the light on the camera had gone off. Stupid, stupid. She thought she’d go longer. She’d even been fool enough to hope she could get through the segment. “Uh, thanks,” she said anyway. It could have been worse.

Sam picked up the small overnight bag she’d brought and left swiftly through the back doors of the studio, before anyone would think to stop her. Now might not be a good time to go back to the SGC. The car they’d given her when she told them she couldn’t stand to be chauffeured anymore sat in the lot, undisturbed. She could find a place to stay the night and see how things were playing out before she returned. She didn’t have any more interviews scheduled until tomorrow afternoon. If they’d cut the broadcast, they probably wouldn’t go ahead with those interviews.

The cheap motel had a television, and Sam spent the early hours of the night scouring newscasts for any mentions or clips of her appearance. She couldn’t find anything. The administration must really be bearing down on the networks. That was all right. The Internet would be damned hard to stop.

The next morning, she checked out and made her way back to the office of a visibly anxious Rodney McKay. She answered his worries absentmindedly as she searched the Internet. 

Strange. She thought she’d get more hits.

“I don't understand this. There's nothing here!” she told McKay. Oh, down the page—“Wait a second... ‘Major Samantha Carter had to cut short an appearance on “Inside Access” with Julia Donovan yesterday, when she suddenly took ill....’” Anger burned in her as she continued, “A spokesman said she was suffering from exhaustion due to her busy schedule and would be canceling her upcoming appearances.’”

Rodney’s voice was surprisingly gentle when he said, “That's what I'm telling you, Sam. Look, there is no story. It never happened.”

He was wrong. He must be wrong. She went back to her search. More of the same.

“What about YouTube?”

“What Tube?”

She entered the URL. “There’s no YouTube?”

“What the hell is YouTube?”

“It’s where people post video clips—often of themselves, but sometimes from TV shows—”

“What, you mean violating copyright?”

“Well, yeah, until they make them take it down. Somebody must have posted it....”

“I don’t think your universe works quite the same way our universe does.”

“But....” She finally looked up from the computer, really looked at Rodney, and saw him looking uncomfortable and embarrassed. “Can’t people just post what they want?”

“Well, some can, but that doesn’t mean anyone can _find_ it.”

“What?”

“You know. You just used a search engine, right?”

“Oh, yeah! Maybe I should try a different one.” Sam opened a couple of new windows and set a couple more search engines going.

“That’s not my point.” McKay sighed. This one didn’t seem to gesture quite as much as the McKay in her universe. It was a little unsettling. “It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because even if somebody takes the risk and posts a newscast the government cut, you won’t find it.”

“Why not?” She was genuinely puzzled. “Takes the risk? You can get in trouble for posting....”

Rodney was getting impatient. “Do you know what the term _martial law_ means? It means you can’t just do anything you want. You need passes to go certain places. There are curfews. And you can’t just post anything you want on the Internet.”

“But surely people can hack—I mean....”

“But how do you find it? Look, somebody _may_ , and I stress _may_ , have taken the risk of posting a clip of your interview. But you need a URL to see it. And you won’t find a link or a URL on any of these search engines. They won’t show it.”

“Why not?” Sam found she was getting angry.

McKay stepped back and raised his hands a little. “Because the search engines block results the government doesn’t want found! I’ve been trying to tell you this! It’s like it didn’t happen. _Maybe_ some group of protesters somewhere is sharing your little outburst. And if you ever meet them, maybe they will give you the URL so that you can watch yourself, okay? But that search can be blocked! You know this, Sam! It’s easy stuff!”

“But I thought they only did that...in...China....” Sam found herself slowing down as his words sank in fully. “How could they?” She jumped to her feet.

“So that people don’t start planning riots on the Internet!” Did people _plan_ riots? “And bombings! And showing video clips that get everyone all riled up!” McKay was waving his hands in the air. “It’s called _martial law_ , okay? That means _military law_! And you of all people should get that, Samantha! There are rules, there are limits, there are...chains of command!”

She slumped back into the chair. “So what I said made no difference?” she asked quietly.

“I, I wouldn’t say that, necessarily.” He shifted his weight uncomfortably. Then, to her surprise, he stepped closer and sat on the edge of the desk, looking at her. “Look, you’re right. Millions of people saw it. And they may be talking about it. Just...not....”

“Not on the Internet.” Sam slammed her hand down on the desk. “Can they talk about it over the phone, or is that...?”

“Uh, I dunno. I wouldn’t, though.” He wasn’t meeting her eyes again.

“God damn it!” The frustration was just too much. “So I did all that, and I can’t tell if it made any difference, because anyone who might have noticed is scared to talk about it! And I can’t get my equipment back, so I can’t go home! I’ve been here more than a week already, and nobody is the same, most of the people I know best aren’t even here or _alive_ , and I can’t go home! I can save your planet, but I can’t go back to protect mine!” 

She would have continued, but McKay laughed—giggled, really, a little nervously—and said, “Well, maybe if you make yourself a big enough pain, they’ll send you back just to get rid of you.”

“And maybe they’ll lock me up in Area 51 next to Vala!” She began pacing the room.

“Who’s Vala?”

“Never mind!” Sam glared at Rodney and was surprised again to see real concern. Some of it even looked like it was for her. 

And the rest—oh, God. Charlie had already threatened him, and here she was, after doing something she knew they wouldn’t like and hiding from them overnight, in McKay’s office, using his computer. “Why did you even let me in?”

He looked at her blankly.

“Couldn’t you get in trouble for helping me?”

He laughed a little, a chuckle this time. “Well, yeah, I suppose. But you looked like you needed some help, and—well, they need me. I’m running key businesses; they can’t do without me. And I made some big campaign contributions...back when we had real elections.” He probably wanted to sound more confident than he really did.

“I should go.”

He slid off the corner of his desk to his feet, but it wasn’t to stop her; it was to say goodbye. She waved him off. “Office isn’t bugged, right?”

“I hope not.” He grinned nervously. 

“Yell at me. Throw me out.”

“What?”

“You have a _glass-walled office_! People can _see_! Can’t you fake something?” She figured it was pretty soundproof. She had already been getting angry, and that might have been visible outside, though her back was to the glass wall that faced onto the atrium. But people could see McKay, perched on the edge of his desk and now standing next to it.

“Oh. Yeah. I don’t think—I don’t think it will be very convincing!” He was increasing his volume and suddenly slipped into his act. “So just go! And don’t bother me again! Thank you _very_ much!” He looked upset—upset and maybe a little confused, but she’d take that.

“Fine!” she yelled back, deliberately opening the heavy wood door before her last words. “I won’t _be_ back!” She tried to slam the door behind her, but of course it closed gently anyway.

If they wanted to find her, they would, she thought as she stormed through the outer offices. It wasn’t just an act; she was furious, even if McKay wasn’t the target (for once). In fact, they’d probably traced her car. They—

Crap. She suddenly remembered: the car had OnStar or its equivalent! In a universe where they didn’t even allow YouTube and they apparently could limit what Google could find, of course they wouldn’t hesitate to trace her car using technology already in the vehicle! Damn! She had allowed herself to get distracted, not once, but over and over—worrying about how this universe was different from hers, about how much she had done wrong, about what she could do to put things right.... She needed to get her head in the game, as Cam would no doubt say—her Cam, not this quitter she’d seen here.

They would know exactly where she was. For all she knew, McKay was on their side and would tell them she’d just left. No, that was paranoid. He really did seem to want to help. And they didn’t need his help anyway. Her car was no doubt constantly traced; she was lucky they’d left her free this long.

She walked swiftly to her car and wasn’t at all surprised when Charlie and two goons came at her, except perhaps that Charlie was willing to be seen personally with the goons. Part of her mind managed to wonder when she’d started thinking of people as “goons” and whether she’d gotten that from Jack O’Neill as she started to fight them off, and she even had a moment to be pleased with her ability to fight off two trained men, and to wonder if no one was helping defend her from an unprovoked attack because they knew these men were from the government.

And then she was in a car, recovering up from what must have been a zat blast, and Charlie himself was putting a gag in her mouth. She tried to bite his finger as it went past her lips, but his finger never really went in. The gag, however, did. Damn. She hated Charlie. She’d rather face Maybourne. Or Woolsey. At least those weasels never actually _gagged_ her. It wasn’t long before they pulled over in an empty lot and Charlie signaled. Back to the Prometheus, back to President Landry’s office. Sam was appreciating General Landry more and more by the moment.

She really didn’t expect the President to say, “A gag? Charlie, was that really necessary?” and then tell his chief of staff and the goons to take off the gag and leave.

“What am I going to do with you, Colonel?” It didn’t really come out as a question, and he wasn’t looking at her; he was reading a file.

“You could let me go.” She’d feel better about that scenario if McKay hadn’t just been laughing at it a few minutes ago. And she didn’t even want to mention that her equipment would go through with her. She tried not even to think it.

“I still need you.” Oh, he sounded like General Landry. But he hadn’t invited her to sit. He could say that he needed her, but he held all the power in this room.

“For what? My knowledge of phase technology? Or as a prop for public relations?”

“What if I said both?” He slapped the file shut.

Sam shrugged. “I won't keep my mouth shut.”

Landry tossed the file onto a pile and rose to his feet. “But that's exactly what you do in your own world. The Stargate's still a secret, right? I know you talk about ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ but you're hiding the greatest secret mankind has ever known from your own people!”

It was true, and yet beside the point. “Well, at least on my world, we don't intend to abandon the rest of the galaxy to the Ori.”

“Well maybe not now. But what do you think will happen if you give them a foolproof way to hide like you've given us?” He sounded sincere, and he looked her in the eye; he honestly thought it was the truth. “Don't be surprised if the rest of the galaxy suddenly doesn't seem that important anymore.” He gave her a sad half-smile.

She replied with equal honesty. “Now, see I know at least one man who won't feel that way. He's the leader of Stargate Command. His name is _General_ Hank Landry.”

Landry hesitated for just a moment, then chuckled and sat back down. Great to know she was being taken seriously. It wasn’t worth trying to press her point.

“Have a seat.” He waved to her, and, after a moment’s hesitation, she sat. “I’m sorry about my chief of staff. He gets overzealous sometimes.”

Sam stared at him. “He’s under your command.”

Landry chuckled a little again. She wished he’d stop it, stop pretending they were friends, or at least friendly. “He’s good at what he does. But he interprets his orders. Don’t we all?” He raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t really expect an answer. “Hmm. I can’t very well have you giving more interviews, can I?”

“I’ll tell the truth.”

“Like you do on your world?”

For a moment, she felt like he could see right through her to the interview in which she’d pretended Alec Colson’s discoveries were all terrestrial technology. She looked away, realized that was a mistake, and looked back at him. “I may not always tell the whole truth, but I don’t use alien technology against my own people!” Except for Colson.

“And I hope you never have to. I wish we didn’t. We do it for the greater good, to help more than we hurt.”

“It’s not too late!” 

“To remake our universe like yours? Pandora’s box has been opened, Colonel, and violence and fear came out.”

“Hope.” It came out of her mouth, but it was Daniel’s word, and she heard his voice in her head. She couldn’t remember how long ago he’d told the story to Teal’c, but she could still hear him, and she repeated his word. “All the bad things came out of the box, but one thing was left in the bottom. Hope.”

Landry nodded. “And I thought you would provide that.”

“They don’t need that from me, sir. They need it from you.”

His eyebrows, trimmed to be less extravagant than General Landry’s, shot up. “She closed the box, you know, to keep the hope in.”

Sam nodded, but she felt a little out of her depth. “The hope is still there, sir.”

“Well, I suppose the plebiscite will tell me whether you’re right or not.” He stood, and she rose automatically with him. “I think we’re going to give you a little time up here to cool off. I’ll arrange a room for your use. And maybe a little more reading material on our situation.” He waved her out and picked up the phone in one smooth motion, and she found herself in the hallway with yet another aide.

Soon enough she had reading material, and she did read it. It didn’t change her mind, though she spent hours, reading through a quick lunch and a dinner that were brought to the little room. She was horrified at the accounts of the rioting that followed the revelation of the Stargate, of course. She could even understand the president’s declaration of martial law. But it had been years. The Americans she had seen weren’t about to riot. Terrorists were frightening enough in her own world, and she couldn’t honestly say her Earth had them under control, but somehow they managed not to use alien technology against their fellow human beings on Earth on a regular basis. 

Her own Earth wasn’t perfect. Sometimes she thought alien technology might even help. How many times did her own military accidentally bomb civilians? Could sharing better scanning technology with other arms of the military, with people who didn’t have the highest clearance, prevent those tragedies? Probably. It was a series of trade-offs; but she thought that at some point, Landry and his people had made the wrong ones. 

But she was tired of thinking those thoughts, tired of worrying about her own Earth _and_ this Earth. This Earth wasn’t exactly free and clear, but her own needed her, and her phase-shifting technology, just as much as this one did. More, now, because at the moment, it didn’t have the defense this one had. She remembered Teal’c saying once that their universe was the only one that mattered. She couldn’t agree—but if she had to choose, she knew which one she’d choose. She deeply hoped the Ori wouldn’t come again to this Earth, but she knew they’d come to hers eventually.

At least in her own universe, Teal’c, Mitchell, and Vala would do whatever they could for Daniel. Maybe they had a lead by now. Vala was right: Adria wouldn’t simply kill Daniel. She wanted him for something. The Jaffa had a lot of people working on intelligence. They would find him. 

This Daniel? He was apparently on his own. This Teal’c probably didn’t even know he was missing, or she felt sure he would drop everything to look for Daniel.

The small, windowless room had a bunk, and a drawer revealed some gender-neutral, one-size-fits-everyone-but-Teal’c pajamas. She smiled at the thought and changed into them. The fact that Landry had given her the stack of files to read indicated that he didn’t merely mean to ship her off to a cell in Area 51. At least, not yet. She wondered if the Vala she had seen there still had a sense of humor and some real streak of humanity that she might uncover if they were neighbors. 

But then she remembered that all the cells were isolation cells, and that was too depressing, and she lay awake on the bed wondering what was going to happen until that ability she’d learned years ago to fall asleep almost anytime, anywhere, kicked in.

***

Sam was astonished when she was summoned to breakfast in the morning—in what appeared to be a presidential dining room on Prometheus. Three silver covered dishes sat on the table, and only one man sat at the table.

President Landry told her to have a seat and then asked her, “Eggs?” and “Change your mind about helping us?” in exactly the same tone of voice.

She had to smile. “Yes to the first.” She watched the president serve eggs onto her plate.

“I take it your silence means you’re not about to say yes to the second,” Landry said. “Bacon? Ham?”

“No, but do you have any toast?”

Landry used the intercom to call for toast, butter, and jam. Sam waited a little nervously for him to resume eating.

“Your toast will be here in a moment, and then I’m afraid I’ll have to go,” he said, polishing off some bacon and scraping the last few bits of egg with his fork. 

“Sir, I think I’ve done a lot for your Earth. You have a defensive weapon that will protect you from Ori attack, and I’m offering all I know about the Ancients’ technology to your SGC. But my Earth needs me now in exactly the same way you did.”

Landry nodded. “I see. I just hoped that your reading....” He trailed off as Sam shook her head.

“Sir, I can understand why you declared martial law—”

A voice over the intercom stopped the conversation in mid-sentence; “that matter in France,” Charlie called it, and Sam wondered what it was. 

“I really have to go,” the president said, standing.

Sam rose automatically.

“Finish your breakfast,” he said. “So the reading didn’t change your mind?”

“No, sir,” she said, still standing. “This country hasn’t seen a significant attack or civil disturbance in nearly two years. I think it’s time to roll back martial law and start making alliances again.”

“Hmm,” said Landry noncommittally. “Colonel.” He nodded to her and left. 

Toast arrived soon after, but Sam felt strange and uncomfortable alone in the small but formal dining area. As soon as she could finish her breakfast, she stepped out, and she was not entirely surprised to find the same two thugs who’d jumped her the previous day waiting to escort her to the transporter.

She was, however, shocked to be brought back to the SGC. The men ignored her questions and walked her to a lab, where she was even more amazed to find Rodney McKay at a computer. 

McKay didn’t seem at all surprised to see her, and his sarcastic tone sounded very familiar: “Ah, Colonel, how nice to see you again.” He waved off her security escort, and they simply walked away.

“McKay, wh–what are you doing here?” she blurted out.

“Ah, it's the, uh, first day on the new job—your old job, actually: Special Advisor to the President. Bit of a pay cut, but, uh, well let's just say they were...uh...persuasive?” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

Oh, God. She should have thought of that before she went to _his_ office to use _his_ computer. Maybe even before her first visit. “I'm so sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.” But then he continued, “Well, the first order of business is to create an inter-universal bridge. Something that I've done in another reality, apparently.”

“Are you serious?”

“Mmm. Yeah, I'm not sure what you said, but, uh, they're letting you go.”

When did Landry decide this? Why didn’t he even tell her? Afraid he’d look like he was getting soft? Or maybe he’d decided after breakfast.... “Wow. I guess they must've realized I'm more trouble than I'm worth.”

“Hmph. I remember I said the same thing the day we got divorced.”

Oh, funny. Great. She could go home, but she had to work with McKay first. 

He moved some cables. “The second order of business is to make this thing”—he pointed to a device—“work like yours.”

Merlin’s device. They had Merlin’s device! So they really didn’t need her equipment? Oh, thank God! But McKay was waiting for her response. Better play it cool. “Well, I'll leave you my notes. That should help. But let's say that you succeed, then what?”

“Then we're safe.”

He made it sound so simple. Even when he was helping her, he couldn’t avoid irking her. She didn’t need to bite back on her sarcasm with McKay. “You do know that there is a whole galaxy out there that's under attack, right? Millions of people are dying, millions more are being subjugated to a false religion.”

“You just never quit, do you?” 

Play it cool, she repeated to herself. Don’t miss this opportunity. “Deep down, I know that your president's a good man.” Or at least she hoped so, and finding herself here, with help, encouraged that hope. “He wants to do the right thing,” she continued. “Maybe he just needs a persistent voice in his ear, nudging him in the right direction.” She gave his shoulder a push.

“And you think I would be good at that”—he poked her, harder, in her shoulder—“do you?”

“The Rodney I know is a master of subtle persuasion.”

“Hmph.” He looked surprised and pleased for just a moment, but then he caught himself. “Oh, you're lying again, aren't you?”

She smiled but refused to answer. “Just think about it.”

He sighed. That was okay. She knew he’d think. Once someone put a bug in McKay’s ear, he couldn’t _stop_ thinking about it.

And so they set to work on the calculations, calculations to bring her back to her own universe. She had seen Rodney do this before. He could do it again, especially with her help.

After a few hours of frustration, Sam tentatively suggested, “What about your sister?”

“What about my sister?” Rodney snapped.

“She helped us—you—last time you made a bridge to another universe.”

“Well, that was obviously in a different universe.” Same old sarcasm in different clothes. Much better clothes, actually. He was now wearing the third set of nice clothes she’d seen him in. She doubted the McKay in her universe even owned three decent shirts apart from his uniform—or could coordinate them with pants, if he did. 

“You don’t speak to her here either?”

McKay looked perplexed. “If I wasn’t speaking to her there, why would she help me?”

Sam couldn’t help but smile. “Well, you hadn’t been...keeping in touch, but we needed her, and you’d...you’d sent her a message at one point, when you thought you might die—”

“Oh, great! So she took pity on me because I was dying?”

“Well, no!” Maybe she should have thought the whole conversation through before raising the question. “In fact, I don’t think she actually got your message. But _you_ were ready to talk to her because of that. And there was no pity involved.” She smiled at him. “I think it was the excitement of the problem that overcame any hesitation she may have had to work with you.”

He scowled in silence for a moment before responding, “So she worked on it in spiteof my involvement, rather than because—”

Sam held up her hands in surrender. “It wasn’t that bad! And once she got out there, to Atlantis, where you were—”

“Oh, right. The alternate universe me off in an alternate galaxy. Not for me, thanks. I’m keeping my feet right here on Earth.”

Was he deliberately distracting her because he was uncomfortable talking about his sister? Or was he just...annoying?

“My point,” Sam reiterated slowly, “is that she might help us, given the interest of the problem.”

He said, “huh,” but his tone said, “no.”

“Well, it’s worth a try!”

“No, it’s _not_.” McKay said with emphasis, leaning on the countertop towards her. “As _thrilled_ as I am to be here, I am not going to go _hunting down_ my baby sister and bring her to...these lovely accommodations.”

“Ohhh,” said Sam, drawing out her answer a little in surprise. He was concerned for her? Well, that was promising, even if it didn’t really help her. But...“What do you mean ‘hunt down’?”

McKay straightened up and threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know where she lives, okay? She’s...I looked for her when the riots started. I was rich; I could afford all the security anyone could want, all right? I may not get along with her, but I wanted her to be safe. But...I couldn’t find her. Probably just as well. If I can’t find her, those goons who grabbed you outside my office won’t be able to find her.”

“You knew about that?” Sam tried to imagine Rodney witnessing that scene. “About them kidnapping—”

“Hell, yes! I have security. We have _cameras_. I may have missed the initial grab, but boy, I saw the replay.” A smile flickered at the edges of his mouth and eyes. “You...it’s nice to see you take down someone other than me.”

Sam laughed. “I didn’t take anybody down.”

“Oh, no, you did! They thought they could take you. Two of them, one of you; together they weighed three to four times what you do. But no. They needed a _zat’n’kitel_ to take you down.” He grinned. “Bet they were pissed.”

She couldn’t bring herself to grin back. “The chief of staff had me gagged.”

“What? Why?” McKay’s voice got shriller, and Sam suddenly realized this Rodney was generally...less shrill than his counterpart back home. “So you wouldn’t _bite_ them?”

“Apparently, he took the ‘gag order’ a bit too literally.” No need to tell him she had been preparing to bite.

McKay laughed and looked back at his screen, shaking his head. “They’re idiots.”

“So you knew? You saw...?”

He sighed. “Yes. I just said so.”

“But you couldn’t do...?”

He hunched over his screen and mumbled.

“What?” Sam stepped closer. “I didn’t—”

“I made some phone calls, okay?” He straightened up and raised his voice; she stepped back. “I...how the hell do you think I ended up here? I’m assuming that _you_ didn’t give Landry a glowing recommendation to secure me this plum position.”

Sam couldn’t hide the shock on her face. “You volunteered? To help me?”

“No!” he shouted. “I just...I suggested that, like we said before, you were more trouble than you were worth, that seeing what had happened to you might have a...chilling effect on other scientists, and that other people could do the work you do at _least_ as well.” He sighed dramatically. “They were the ones who said, ‘Oh, thanks for volunteering!’” He glared at her. He had the same McKay glare. “I said, ‘I wasn’t volunteering!’ And they said, ‘Oh, yes, you were!’ And here I am!”

McKay went back to typing but suddenly looked up again, as if he’d just remembered what they’d been discussing. “And I don’t know about the Jeannie in your universe, but I don’t think the one in _my_ universe is gonna be up to this kind of work, even if she’d do it! So just drop it!”

“She’s not a physicist?”

“No, not anymore.”

“She gave it all up to get married?” Sam smiled.

McKay glared at her. What had she done now? “She’s just—she’s never gonna be in the same league as me—and you. And that’s fine.” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “I mean, she’s probably a peacenik or something. Even if she could do the work, I don’t think she would, not for us. Now drop it, okay?”

They went back to their equations, and to the cursing that seemed to accompany them.

“Dinner,” McKay suddenly announced some time later, having worked his way through a sandwich, a pack of mini-donuts, and an energy bar that he declared disgusting but completely polished off. “Can’t think if I don’t eat.”

Sam laughed. “You know, some people are very different in this universe. You’re not so different.”

“Oh, really?” he said in that familiar snarky tone. “So are you and I divorced, married, or engaged where you come from?”

She shuddered before she could stop herself. 

McKay laughed and started out of the room. “I take it that’s a no.” He stopped and looked back. “Coming? I doubt you can think without food either. You haven’t eaten anything since that sandwich that peon brought you.”

Sam joined him in the hallway, looking quickly around to be sure no one had heard. “Airman,” she hissed. “It’s ‘airman,’ not peon!”

McKay waved a hand, turned to her to say something she was sure she didn’t want to hear—and collided with an excited Bill Lee rounding a corner.

“Major—Colonel Carter!” He nearly hugged her but then held back. “Good news! I got the last of your equipment here!”

“Thank you, Bill!” she said sincerely.

He smiled and rocked a little on his feet. “Supervised the transfer myself to make sure nothing got left behind or ‘accidentally’ lost.” He made scare quotes with his fingers but looked around while he did it. Then he seemed really to notice McKay for the first time. “Doctor McKay?” He looked from him back to Sam. “Rodney McKay? I heard—they told us you’d be taking a position, but I didn’t expect you to be here in the Mountain already!” He was soon pumping McKay’s arm while McKay looked at him like he was a, well, peon.

“Rodney McKay, meet Doctor Bill Lee,” Sam said with a slightly forced smile. Oh, these two personal styles weren’t going to work very well together. “Bill helped me—save the world!” Sam said.

McKay extracted his hand from Bill’s.

“Aw, that’s awfully kind of you!” Bill smiled hugely. “You really did—”

McKay interrupted, “Great. Now that we know who we all are, can we go eat?”

“Sure! Sounds great!” Bill said, and promptly joined them.

Sam had to imagine McKay’s eyes rolling, because he took the lead and she couldn’t see his face.

She did try one more time during dinner to suggest a family reunion of sorts. She waited until Bill went in search of dessert. “Even if Jeannie doesn’t work with you, maybe you should just go see her, see how she’s doing! I mean, you’re obviously concerned....”

She clearly only got that many words out because McKay was too stunned to talk right away. His arm shot across and pinned hers to the table. “No. Drop it. For the last time,” he said in a whisper she could barely hear, “you do not _mention_ my sister here. Are you nuts?” He released her arm to make a small scrabbling motion on the table with one hand. At her blank look, he repeated it.

“Bugs?” she mouthed.

“Finally!” he mouthed back, or at least that was what she thought he said. He continued in a low hiss, “Look, apparently life is damned near _perfect_ where you come from.” 

“Perfect? We’re facing an Ori attack—that’s why I have to get back as soon as possible!”

“Really? Oh, I though it was just because you didn’t like us!” he snarled. She had genuinely pissed him off. It hadn’t occurred to her that the lab might be bugged, but of course he was right. They probably feared sabotage. They had a woman from another universe who had her own agenda and a man they’d ripped from his highly successful business—or was it businesses?—working together to get her back andestablish a solid planetary defense. Of course it was bugged. 

She followed Rodney’s lead in taking the conversation onto safer shores. “I don’t like some of you. But my people need me.”

“Yep. Little Miss-Save-the-World.” She glared. “Doctor Save-the-World?” She glared more. “Major—Colonel Save-the-World?”

“It wasn’t funny the first time, McKay,” she growled.

“Good! Because you talking about my sister isn’t funny. She doesn’t _like_ me. I don’t like _her_.” His voice had passed through a normal volume range into loud. It would doubtless be for the best if everyone thought personal dislike was at the heart of his objections to his sister. “And I don’t care how we get along in your universe. You’ll be leaving shortly. As soon as I can arrange. Don’t go trying to _fix_ things. Don’t try to fix _me_.”

“Is that why—why she married you?” Sam asked quietly. “To fix you?” She wanted to take back the question the moment it slipped out.

Rodney shifted uncomfortably, echoing her feelings. “Oh, God, don’t do this.”

Only then did she start to process the fact that McKay had spoken quite loudly about the fact that she was _not_ Major Carter. People were staring. _Everyone_ was staring. Hadn’t he been told to keep her identity a secret? “Oh, God,” Sam echoed.

“Hey, thanks! You know, she might have actually thought I had some _good_ qualities! She might have _loved_ me!” He jumped up and stormed away, leaving some cake on his tray.

Everyone suddenly looked somewhere else, except for Bill Lee, who had apparently been standing back with some desserts. He put a piece of cake down where he’d been sitting, and handed her a bowl of Jell-O. “You like the green stuff, right?” he said.

Suddenly Sam wanted to cry. Everything was so mixed up, so right and so wrong at the same time....

“Wrong color,” Bill said hastily. “Blue? Red? Purple? Wait, do they even have purple?” He glanced around.

The tears came out as laughter instead, but he must have noticed how close she was to the other one. “Sorry,” he said, looking down at his cake. He held a fork but hadn’t done anything with it yet. “I’m not very good with people.” 

She could take control of the situation, Sam told herself. She could stop the laughter before it turned into tears for real. “Not like me?” she gasped, and suddenly Bill dropped his fork into his cake, and he was laughing too, and she felt safe again for a little while. 

“Or that master of tact, Rodney McKay?” she managed to gasp out just as Bill got a loaded fork into his mouth.

After they cleaned up the resulting mess, Sam decided she was a bit too punchy, and went to get some sleep.

***

The next day McKay must have forgiven her, or something, because he was no more annoying than usual. They talked about their work and little else; it was safest.

“No, no, no!” It was her fourth suggestion of the morning he was ridiculing. “I can’t believe you’d even think that would work! How did you ever manage to save our planet without blowing us all to hell?”

He glared at her. She glared back.

“Oh, don’t stop now,” she replied. “I’m waiting for the part where you call me a dumb blonde.”

“What?” 

He had something worse in mind? “Aren’t you going to call me a dumb blonde?”

“Why the hell would I call you a dumb blonde?” He looked at her not as if she was stupid, but as if she was crazy. “I mean, you could do me serious physical harm!” He looked back at his monitor.

She’d do him bodily harm for calling her a dumb blonde, but not for telling her she’d been lucky not to blow up the planet? She had to laugh. “You told me in my universe that you kept falling for dumb blondes.”

“So I’m an idiot as well as a sucker there?” His face scrunched up in thought. “Is that why I got sent to another galaxy?”

She laughed again, “No, but that’s why you get sent to Siberia.”

“Siberia? As in Russia?” He said the words with distaste. “What kind of whacked-out universe do you live in? And you want to make us more like you?” He glanced sideways again and then returned to his computer.

“The Russians had a Stargate, and....” She closed her laptop. “You know what? I need lunch.”

“Hmm,” McKay replied. The wastebasket next to him was stuffed with wrappers from various kinds of food and not-quite-food items. “Some peon will bring us lunch soon. I bet I could call....”

“I think I need to get out of here for a few minutes,” Sam admitted. 

He gave her a surprisingly sympathetic look. “Bring me back a sandwich when you’re done. Ham and cheese. Oh, and one of those chocolate brownies they had last night, if there are any left.”

She was relieved he didn’t offer to come with her. As alone as she had felt just a couple of days ago, she was amazed she wanted some time to herself. She wouldn’t get it here, except in that little closet they’d given her and called her room “for the remainder of your stay” as if she were some hotel guest. But at least a few moments....

But when she saw Major Lorne sitting down alone at a table in the commissary, she took her tray over and joined him.

He looked up, surprised, and then anger clouded his face. “Well, if it isn’t Colonel Advisor to the President.”

“What?”

“Saw your interview,” he said with an unmistakable edge in his voice.

“Which one?”

“You know which one,” he said bitterly. “The one where you talk about what an awful job we’ve been doing.”

She was genuinely surprised. “I was just suggesting it was time to loosen martial law! I didn’t say anything—”

“You made it us against them. We’re trying to protect the American people, Colonel Carter, not—not tyrannize them! We elected our president. And some of us think he’s doing a damned fine job! We elected our Congress. And we have been working our butts off, and sometimes _dying_ , to protect the people of this country. And the people of the world! Even those terrorists out there owe their lives to you, to us.” His jaw still showed tension. “And while I appreciate that you protected us, I don’t think you know what the hell you’re talking about in politics.”

“Politics? That’s all this is to you? Martial law? People being put down with alien tech? Just ‘politics’?”

“No,” he answered with certainty. “It’s not politics. It’s politics when _you_ get on TV and start talking out of your ass, trying to abuse your position and the trust you’ve won to make the world the way you want it to look, because you’d feel more at home there!” He turned away and took a deep breath.

“I know this isn’t my home!” She snapped. “I’m trying to go back!”

“And we all appreciate that,” Lorne said with something resembling a smile. “Just try to limit the damage you do before you get there.” He put a huge bite in his mouth, clearly not wanting to continue the conversation but not willing to leave before he was done eating.

“Well, I’m not giving any more interviews.” She smiled a little back. “Look, it’s not...I’m not against you. Really! I know how much you’ve given. I do,” she said when he looked like he had a retort. “I talked to Satterfield. I know how she lost her leg. I just think...I think things will be better for everyone when we—you—get this country back to...what it used to be. Do you as military have the support of the people?” 

Lorne’s look hardened again.

“That’s why you live on base, isn’t it? Or nearby? I’ve seen the housing surrounded by barbed wire! Well, on my planet, members of armed forces can hold their heads high when they go out in public, in the US, even though nobody knows we’ve been saving them from aliens!” She smiled, trying not to look too pleading. “I hope not to be here much longer, but I don’t see why we can’t be on friendly terms. We really want the same things: peace for our worlds.”

Lorne’s look didn’t really soften. He finished shoveling food into his mouth and eventually swallowed a couple of times. “We don’t have to be enemies,” he said at last. “But you’re not my friend. In fact, your coming here killed her.” He stood up and took his tray away without a glance back.

Sam felt her cheeks burning. That wasn’t fair! The mistake that had killed Major Sam Carter had been made _by_ Major Sam Carter. It was bad luck that Lieutenant Colonel Sam Carter happened to be running her own experiment at the same time—tragic luck. But it wasn’t Sam’s own fault, and she thought Lorne knew that. 

She could understand how the interview might have looked to him. She glanced around the room. No one was looking at her. She shoved the last of her own lunch into her mouth and took McKay’s food back to him.

Maybe this McKay was a little more sensitive than the one she was used to, because after she’d been back a few minutes, he said, “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Need to get this done,” she said.

“Did going to lunch clear your head?”

She let said head fall towards her chest. “No, not really.”

“Word got out that you aren’t Major Carter, you know,” he said.

She looked at him then, not sure how to feel. “Well, you made pretty sure of that, with your rant in the commissary yesterday!” 

He grinned, annoyingly. “Yeah. Seems they forgot to tell me most people didn’t have clearance to know that.” 

“Did you get in trouble?” she had to ask.

“Oh, no.” He grinned broader. “I think the dynamic duo who have been instrumental in escorting us to this establishment probably got in some trouble, though. Because, really, no one had told me.” He looked more serious. “But if you’re getting funny looks....”

“Oh, no,” she said tersely. “Nothing of that sort.”

“Really? What, then?”

Oh, crap. She’d just piqued his interest.

“It doesn’t matter!” she said in frustration. “Look, let’s just get on with this....”

“Okay.” He went back to eating and typing at the same time. He seemed very proficient at the combination.

That night, she lay awake in her narrow bed and wondered if she would ever get home. She couldn’t stay here. She found she lacked the nerve or the energy to go back to the commissary for dinner, and McKay, surprisingly, had volunteered to find something edible, and then brought back food for both of them and ate with her. 

She had alienated everyone but Rodney McKay. What if they couldn’t find a way back for her?

***

But Sam needed breakfast the next day, and she couldn’t hide forever, so she went back to the commissary. To her surprise, Major Satterfield called her over to join her.

“So, now I know why you were acting weird.” Satterfield smiled.

“Because I’m not me.” Sam smiled back, hesitantly.

“It must be awful to find yourself...here. I guess things aren’t like this on your world?” She glanced around, talking quietly. “Look, I know what Lorne said yesterday. He and Major Carter were close friends, really close. And he’s, well, he’s a pretty gung-ho kinda guy.”

Sam gave her a more genuine smile this time but kept her voice low. “I...I guess I’d be pretty mad, myself.” She swallowed some coffee. 

Satterfield licked her lips, apparently choosing her words carefully. “Did you lose your Daniel Jackson like we did? A few years ago?”

“Which time?” Sam asked, then winced.

Satterfield looked horrified. “Radiation—Kelowna,” she fumbled.

Sam nodded. “But we got him back. He...ascended. He did so here too, right?” She had seen that in the records.

“Yeah.” Satterfield ate some cereal. “I just...I don’t know how you felt, but a lot of people had a really hard time with Jonas Quinn for a long time after that.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sam agreed. “I...I really can’t blame Major Lorne. I mean, I’m surprised he didn’t blow up at me sooner.” She remembered her own struggles over Jonas’s role in what happened on Kelowna. She had hardly spoken to him the first few weeks after Daniel died. And Sam had had a more direct role in Major Sam Carter’s death than Jonas had had in Daniel’s.

Satterfield shrugged. “I think he was still hoping for a bit we’d get her back. He’s had a rough time. First he lost Doctor Jackson—and they say he blames himself. Now he lost his 2IC. He’ll get over being mad at you. Or he won’t. It’s not your problem. Your problem is to get home.”

Sam looked at the young woman and wondered if she was out of line to ask. “So...did you see the interview that got everyone so upset?”

Satterfield looked away for a moment. “Heard about it.”

“And you weren’t upset?”

“Hell, yeah!” She was still talking quietly, but there was an intensity to her voice Sam hadn’t heard before. But then she looked back at Sam. “But I also heard about what you said to Major Lorne. I mean, half the base heard within a few hours. And maybe you were right. I would sure as hell not like to be the enemy to my own fellow citizens.” She glanced around the room some more. “But, you know, you might want to give us more of a chance. We might surprise you.”

“President Landry already has.” Sam sipped her coffee some more. “But I still have to find a way home.”

“With the help of Doctor McKay! Is he as brilliant as they say?” Satterfield’s face lit up. 

Oh, God, the woman was serious. Was she about to replace Daniel with McKay in her hero-worship? Sam leaned in and whispered, “How brilliant do they say he is?”

“Um, brilliant like you are.” 

Sam rolled her eyes and whispered further. “Do they say how annoying he is?”

Satterfield’s eyes got wide again, but then they narrowed and she grinned. “Do tell,” she hissed back.

***

The next couple of days were an exhausting round of calculating with McKay, arguing with McKay, eating with McKay, and escaping from McKay. She found June Satterfield ready to talk at any time and sometimes swung by her little office to pick her up to go to the commissary. 

Lorne at best nodded to her curtly and made no effort to speak to her.

It was easiest being with Satterfield. Sam had hardly known her before; this personality didn’t clash with a remembered one from another universe. But it wasn’t the same as being with one of her friends. Well, maybe Satterfield was a friend, or was becoming a friend; she had matured well beyond the eager young lieutenant who had been rather enamored of Daniel a few years ago.

But she wasn’t one of Sam’s teammates. Sam knew she could do far worse if she had to stay on this planet, and there were still moments when she very much feared that she would indeed be stranded here.

But more and more, there were moments when she was sure that she was going home.

***

As Sam had hoped, the problems they had to overcome used up nearly all of McKay’s energy, and he didn’t waste a whole lot of time talking about matters unrelated to their current problem. He also came up with things she simply didn’t see, she had to admit (but not out loud).

But as she feared, eventually he worked his way back around to personal matters. “So, we’re not married in your universe. But you said we’ve met?”

“Oh, yes, we’ve met. Didn’t I tell you that you got transferred to Siberia after we worked together the first time?” She tried to smile sweetly, hoping she could scare him off. She knew this conversation wouldn’t go well. 

“But you didn’t get transferred?” He frowned.

“I wasn’t the one who screwed up and nearly got somebody killed,” she said shortly. She really didn’t want to talk about McKay, but more than that, she really didn’t want to hear how Major Sam Carter had married this man.

“Oh.” He was still staring at her. “What did I do?”

“Well, it’s a long story, but we disagreed about how to save someone who had been trapped in the Stargate when an explosion disrupted the matter stream. You managed to get the president to agree to a forty-eight hour deadline.”

“I did?” He looked surprisingly pleased. 

“And you were wrong! If General Hammond had kept to that deadline, Teal’c would be dead!” She was surprised to find herself getting so angry again.

“Oh. Sorry. But wait—that wasn’t really me.” He didn’t sound sorry. 

“And you called me a whack job!”

McKay scrunched up his face ridiculously. “ _I_ called you a whack job? I’m sorry to break this to you, _Colonel_ Carter, but I only met you last week.” He sighed. “Last week, when I was still free to just run my companies and—”

“Okay! Just—just knock it off, okay. You’re right; it wasn’t you. So quit asking.”

“Touchy!” Of course he wouldn’t back off. Maybe this man hadn’t called her a whack job, but he might as well have. He probably would before they were through. He was far too much like the Rodney McKay in her own universe. “Oh, come on. You must be dying to ask me.”

“I’m dying to get home.” If she kept her eyes on her monitor, maybe he would get back to his own.

But no, she could see out of the corner of her eye that he had moved closer and leaned forward on his elbows to talk. “No, no. You genuinely don’t like me; it must be killing you to know that the you in my universe married me!”

Sam stopped grinding her teeth long enough to say, “It’s annoying. I wouldn’t say it’s killing me.”

“Don’t you want to—”

“No! I do not want to _know_ anything! I just want to go home!”

McKay straightened up, and a pained look crossed his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was...I...I’m really sorry.” He turned back to his computer.

What the hell was that? It was all she could do not to ask out loud. Like he cared how she felt? Maybe he actually did. Maybe he was different. 

And maybe this Sam Carter was different. Well, she had to be, didn’t she? But Sam didn’t want to know what there was about this McKay or this Carter that made them get married. It was all too frightening. She knew that in other universes, versions of her had been married and engaged to Jack O’Neill. Some days, she thought she knew why (though other days, she thought their counterpoints must have been crazy). She wondered if there were universes where she married to Pete Shanahan. She wondered if she was happy in those universes.

No time for that. Time to work. She had to get home, with the device.

***

A few hours passed before McKay suggested out of the blue, “Dinner?” 

Realizing how late it was, Sam got off her stool and straightened slowly. God, that hurt. She wasn’t as young as she used to be. She put her hands on her hips and turned a bit.

“We can go out,” McKay continued, almost shyly. “I mean, you must be sick of this base by now. I’m pretty sick of it. My office had windows,” he added in a mutter.

She stared at him. He was offering to take her out to dinner?

“If you don’t want to, that’s—that’s fine too,” he said. “I mean, the food here kinda sucks, but I know you wanna get back. In fact, if you just wanna go to the commissary by yourself, I could, I could understand that.” He bent back over his computer.

“McKay?” She wasn’t sure what he was disturbed about, but she had the feeling she was being terribly dense. She went over to look at his screen to see if something there was bothering him, but of course he was working on a different part of the problem than she was, and what she could take in at a glance meant nothing to her.

What did register was the way he moved back from the monitor, looking at her hesitantly.

“I’m sorry about before,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. I just wanted to know what I was like where you come from, and I thought you’d want to know what you—I mean, what my wife—my ex-wife—what this Samantha Carter was like.” 

Oh. He still felt bad about that. “It’s okay,” she said honestly. “I...I think I just really don’t want to know, all right?”

He smiled nervously. “I can respect that. I just didn’t know you’d feel so strongly about it.”

“You never were very subtle,” Sam said with a smile. “Come on. I don’t want to take the time to leave the base, but we can get dinner in the commissary.”

So they ate together but not in the lab. Dinner felt very awkward, and finally Sam said, against her better judgment, “Just spit it out. Tell me what you want to tell me, and then we can put it behind us.”

McKay flushed. “It wasn’t so much that I wanted to _tell_ you something¬—well, not something specific. I just thought you’d want to...ask. Like I wanted to ask. About me—the other me, I mean.” 

“You know, you’re more articulate than your counterpart.” Did I just _tease_ him? she asked herself too late.

“Thanks,” he snorted.

Well, actually, he might be more articulate. “At least you said what was on your mind instead of dancing around it.”

“You mean like I have been the past three days?” He snorted again.

“Oh.” She hadn’t realized. He gave her funny looks often enough, but she thought it was just McKay being McKay. “I guess it must be kind of hard on you, me being the counterpart of your ex-wife,” she said at last.

“Give the genius a prize,” he said, but with a smile, and no heat. She had the sense he’d said it before, maybe many times, to her counterpart.

“I’m sorry—”

He shook his head vigorously. “Not your fault. Just a lousy, crazy accident.” He took a deep breath. “But you’re an awful lot like her.” He looked at her closely.

Sam didn’t like the feeling of being compared to this other woman that she didn’t know. “I’m sure I am,” she said to buy time while she tried to turn the conversation elsewhere.

“I know,” he said, breaking off his gaze. “I’m freaking you out, aren’t I? My wife...my ex-wife, she was flattered by my attention. For a while, anyway. She said people didn’t look at her like she was a woman most of the time, and when they did, it was mostly to say something derogatory.” 

He looked at her, apparently waiting for her to say something, but when she didn’t, he continued anyway. “We met at a conference. The other papers were dumb. We blew off a session, went out for a drink, found we were much smarter than everyone there”—he smirked—“and decided to get to know each other better. We went back to my—”

“Whoa! Too much information!!”

He grinned, then thought for a moment. “You met me at the SGC? In your universe?”

“Well, it wasn’t really you, of course. But yes. He was a consultant.”

McKay shook his head. “And a jerk and an idiot, apparently.”

“Well, he...his people skills are poor, let’s just say that. But apparently he’s gotten better in Atlantis. He has some really good friends there.” People who stood by him after he blew up a solar system, which Sam still couldn’t believe. Then again, she also found it hard to believe when she read reports about Rodney McKay risking life, limb, and dinnertime to save other people, but she kept getting those reports.

McKay grinned at her. “You’re defending him.”

She shrugged. “Well, I don’t like him a whole lot. But I don’t hate him. And...he’s a genius. He’s saved a lot of lives in the Pegasus galaxy. The whole Atlantis outpost wouldn’t have made it without him.”

McKay’s eyebrows went up. 

“But I’m glad I work at the SGC and he’s on Atlantis,” she couldn’t help but add.

He laughed out loud at that. “Dessert?” he asked as he stood up. “They have Jell-O.” 

She hesitated, and he didn’t wait for an answer. Then her mouth dropped open as he snagged a bowl of blue Jell-O and then a piece of chocolate cake. Damn. She managed to get her mouth closed before he turned to look, but he did look a bit smug as he handed her the bowl and a spoon.

“Some things never change,” he said with satisfaction.

That scared the hell out of her.

***

Before Sam left, she wanted to say a few more words to General Hammond. He was the man she trusted most in this universe, she had decided, even if she didn’t trust him fully.

“What can I do for you, Colonel?” the General asked politely. “I hope your work is coming along?”

“Yes, actually, sir, it is. I just needed a short break and, well....” She’d had this all planned out, and it went much smoother in her head. “I know you think I haven’t learned anything from this universe, sir, but I have. I’ve learned that we need to be very careful how we handle knowledge of the Stargate. Having people find out in a crisis—I know you couldn’t avoid it,” she added quickly at his frown. “But we’ve been keeping it under wraps, gradually expanding the circle of those who know.... At this point, not only our major allies know, but all the nuclear powers. It’s at the highest level of classification in every country, but occasionally we’ve had reason to tell someone we wouldn’t normally...grant clearance. And we’ve been....” It sounded so cold, but it was true, and necessary. “We’ve been observing their reactions. And we’re learning how to tell our story. We’ve had a couple of journalists film some of our work, for when it’s made public—in fact, one of them is Julia Donovan!”

General Hammond waited patiently. Too obviously patiently.

She brought herself back to her point. “But I’ve learned more in these two weeks about how people _could_ react, how people _did_ react, than we’ve learned in ten years. And you can be sure I’ll be briefing my people on all I’ve learned.”

She paused, and he smiled encouragingly, clearly seeing that she was nearing her point.

“In return for all you’ve done for me, I’m sharing all I can with Doctor McKay; we’re testing the new shield today to be certain that you have it up and running before I go. So technically, I think you’re learning a lot.

“But there’s a little more I can do.”

“And what’s that?” He seemed genuinely interested.

“I know you’re not...really interested in my...political views, for lack of a better term. But I can tell you about some things in my universe that you might be able to use.”

He nodded again.

“The Tok’ra have been a useful ally. Not always reliable,” she admitted. “You can’t always count on them showing up. Their numbers are too low; they risk dying out as a people.” She knew Jack O’Neill would phrase the matter differently, but she shoved that out of her head. “I know it’s hard to get them to keep in touch—to be honest, we haven’t had much contact since my father died—but they might be worth...looking up. They’ve given us a couple of good tips even since we lost my dad.

“In my universe, the Jaffa have freed themselves, and many have been valuable allies against the Ori. Maybe that’s why the Ori have already sent multiple ships to your Earth, but not to mine.”

General Hammond pulled a piece of paper towards himself and picked up a pen, and she stopped dead with surprise. “Go on,” he said with a smile. “I can’t make any promises, but I can tell you that I will definitely consider what you say. I’d just like to make a few notes.”

She nodded. “The Lucian Alliance is a danger in my universe,” she went on. “Vala Mal Doran can tell you about them. In fact, she can be a valuable source of information.”

Clearly shocked, the general set down his pen. “Vala Mal Doran?” He thought for a moment. “That alien who brought the tablet?” he asked incredulously.

“A tablet of valuable intel,” Sam pointed out. 

He didn’t pick the pen back up, and he didn’t reply right away.

“If I might ask, sir: why was she imprisoned?”

“For lying her way into this facility, threatening us, and trying to slap some kind of cuff on one of our linguists!” Hammond replied with some heat.

“Daniel Jackson?” she asked.

“No, of course not!” She could see from his face that her credibility was taking a nosedive. “It may be an unwritten rule, but everyone on base knows: don’t let alien women near Doctor Jackson!”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh. General Hammond didn’t see the joke. Oh, that wasn’t helping her case. “On my world,” she explained, “Vala and Daniel reached...an understanding.” Sam leaned forward. “Vala Mal Doran is a member of SG-1.”

Hammond leaned back in his chair; for a moment, Sam had the absurd thought that he was trying to get away from her. Well, he had a point. If they had an unwritten rule on her world to keep Daniel away from alien women....

“Did Doctor Jackson meet Sha’re in your universe?” he demanded. She nodded. “The Goa’uld Hathor? Shyla?”

“Hathor and Shyla were hardly the same as Sha’re!” Sam objected.

Hammond nodded slowly. “But the outcome is the same,” he said gently. “Grief for everyone involved.”

She could only stare at him. She wanted to object that without Sha’re, they’d never have had so many Gate addresses, and they’d have been nearly blind and powerless against Apophis.

But before she could form the thought, the General had moved on. “Are you sure you can trust this Mal Doran?”

“Mine? I’m positive, sir. Yours? No, I don’t really know her at all. But I would like to suggest that you take the information from yours a little more seriously. Not that you let her on SG-1!” she added quickly. “But if she’s anything like our Vala, she has a lot of good intel. You need to offer her something, though, because she told me she cooperated, but she got nothing.”

Hammond was starting to get angry. “You talked to her while you were at Area 51?”

Sam nodded. “Yes, sir. I wanted—I had to know if she was like ours. And, frankly, sir, she doesn’t strike me as the same person. But maybe given a chance, she could do something for you. And locked up as she is, she can hardly hurt.”

“She can lead us into an ambush, Colonel,” General Hammond said coldly. “Or, more likely, on a wild goose chase. Do you know how long she’s been a prisoner?”

Sam nodded but held her ground. “Sir, I respectfully suggest that you question her about the Lucian Alliance, its planets, and its major players. They may have shifted since she knew them, but do you know _anything_ about the Lucian Alliance right now?”

He hesitated but then shook his head. “You do realize, don’t you, that we probably don’t need to worry about them if we’re not trying to ally with the Tok’ra and the Jaffa and half the galaxy?”

“They have Goa’uld ships, sir,” Sam said crisply. “You may think you don’t need to worry, but....”

At last, General Hammond picked up his pen and made a note.

By the time Sam was done, she had mentioned Colonel Mitchell’s unfair treatment, which got Hammond’s sympathy, even if she wasn’t sure he could do anything about it; the probable importance of Teal’c and Bra’tac among the Jaffa; the possible presence of Goa’ulds on Earth; the chance that Ba’al had clones; and, finally, the values and risks of the Pegasus galaxy.

“It’s a lot to take in,” said General Hammond, setting down his pen at last, with a few more sheets of legal pad now covered in notes. “It’s a shame you don’t know anything that would help us find Doctor Jackson,” he added.

Sam drew in a breath quickly. “Yes, sir,” she said in a low tone. “I wish I did, in any universe. But, for what they’re worth, I’ve left more detailed notes in a set of files on one of the computers in my—Doctor McKay’s lab,” Sam said at last with a smile. “I’ll give you the access code.” She wrote it down on the legal pad he handed her. “I wanted to tell you about them in person before, well, overwhelming you with detail.”

“Anything else?” the General said dryly. “Other people we should look up, or races we should try to contact, or planets we should know about?”

Sam had already decided that it was better not to tell them about Radek Zelenka, because US relations with the Czechs weren’t very good, and she wasn’t going to be responsible for the US kidnapping him, however brilliant a scientist he was. She wasn’t going to tell him about any number of people, in fact, because she had already forced a certain Rodney McKay into a job he never wanted. 

The name Dakara would not pass her lips in this universe. She feared it was not safe to tell them about Khalek; his planet had not been found here, and though she thought perhaps she should warn them to destroy him, it might be best to keep his existence secret. With the SGC doing so few explorations, they might never find that lab. Cameron Mitchell wasn’t around to push a button he couldn’t read before anyone deciphered Anubis’s notes. And no Sam Carter would help them find a way onto that planet.

“Thanks for coming to talk with me, Colonel,” the General said, shaking her hand with a sincere warmth. “I can’t tell you what we’ll do with this information, these ideas. But I _will_ go over your notes, and—you may have saved us a bit of trouble, at the very least.”

***

Then the next day, it was time to do it. A test to see if they could link to other universes had resulted in drawing a small amount of power; McKay insisted it was the only way to make sure they had things working correctly, and she cringed, but she set up a shield and did it.

And then it was time to say goodbye, and that was suddenly more difficult than she’d expected. McKay made phone calls to tell everyone they’d be trying to send her back in an hour, and soon people were coming in. June gave her a hug. 

General Hammond gave her a warm handshake, wished her luck repeatedly, and then finally drew her into a hug. “I’m sure the Jacob in your universe must have been every bit as proud of you as ours was,” he whispered, and it brought tears to her eyes.

He released her, and she was unexpectedly facing Major Lorne. “Good luck,” he said awkwardly. “I hope you get back to where you belong and....”

“I’m sorry you lost your teammate and friend,” Sam said, saving him from having to finish a sentence it looked like he couldn’t end. “I really am.” And she returned his salute. His look was unreadable; she couldn’t tell if he was sorry for what he’d said that day, glad she was going, or some mix.

One further surprise awaited: President Landry. “Just have a moment,” he said, shaking her hand. “But I wanted to wish you luck, and thank you. On behalf of the people”—he suddenly grinned—“of the great state of Idaho, the great country of these United States, and the great planet of Earth.”

Sam smiled back. She had had things in mind to say if she saw him again before she left, but they seemed to desert her for a moment, and then he was gone.

“Huh,” said a familiar voice at her elbow. “Idaho?”

“Never mind, Rodney.” 

“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets just as she wondered whether he would try to hug her or just shake her hand. 

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Sorry about your Samantha—”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “She was never really mine, I think. But I’m, yeah, I’m sorry too.” He looked her in the eye, and she knew that he was looking for traces of the woman he’d married. “I’m glad I could help.”

“Good luck with everything,” she said, rubbing her own hands together, not sure what to do with them. “I know you didn’t want this job.”

“No! No, well, really, it’s kind of exciting. I mean, we’ve got some serious technology.”

“Be nice to Bill Lee.” 

His eyes widened in an “are you kidding?” look.

“And remember what I said about talking to the President.”

“How can I forget? Though I did lose track of how many times you said it.” Rodney bounced on his feet a little. “Look, um—good luck.” He grabbed her in a sudden hug before she even saw his hands come out of his pockets.

She returned it, awkwardly, and wished him luck in return.

Rodney left the room and then appeared in the observation room above. 

Sam crossed her fingers, said a little prayer to a God she didn’t think she believed in but hadn’t entirely ruled out, and then executed the program.

And then suddenly she was looking at Bill Lee, who was scanning the room with headphones on. There was no Rodney McKay in the observation booth.

“Doctor Lee!” she cried out—hoping, fearful.

His eyes grew round, and he dropped part of his equipment, and then he was tearing off his headphones making pained noises.

“You’re back!” And he didn’t hug her.

After far too much time having her identity and her health verified in the infirmary while giving the abbreviated debriefing to a slightly skeptical _General_ Landry, she was walked back to her lab by her teammates. Finally, away from everyone else, she could relax, and just be herself, although the fact that there was no news on Daniel put a damper on their happiness.

Then Vala asked eagerly, “Hey, what was I like in that reality?”

“You were in jail.” 

“Not again!” Vala didn’t seem terribly fazed, though, and Mitchell smirked at Vala.

Then Mitchell asked about his counterpart, and Sam dodged by saying she didn’t want to talk about it, and changed the subject: “What about you guys? What have you been doing this whole time?”

They looked at each other, but clearly they didn’t want to answer. What, had they been having parties without her?

Teal’c finally spoke—she knew she could count on Teal’c. “When you did not return for several hours, we began to suspect that something might have gone wrong.”

No duh, Sam thought, then felt guilty.

Vala elaborated: “Well, we just assumed that the machine had malfunctioned, and you were stuck out of phase.”

“We attempted to communicate with you using the Sodan cloaking device, and when that failed....”

“What?” Oh, God, they hadn’t declared her dead, had they? At least they hadn’t packed up her office!

“We took shifts...trying to keep...you company,” Vala said haltingly.

What? They didn’t! “You mean...?”

“Yeah, we talked to an empty room.” Cam said forcefully, no doubt to cover his embarrassment.

Oh, God! “For two weeks?” Two whole weeks?

“It did stop eventually, but it did go on...for...quite some time,” Cam said nervously.

Teal’c agreed.

If she had felt warm inside at returning home, she felt like she might burst now. “Well, that must have been some conversation! What did you say?”

“You know, I've got a file to read.” And Cam was gone!

But she could count on Teal’c.

“I have a sparring session with Sergeant Siler.” Et tu, Teal’c?

Sam turned and grinned at Vala. Her friend! She had her friend back!

“I'm...bidding...for a time share on eBay.” And Vala turned and left. _What?_

They were just embarrassed, Sam told herself—and suddenly she was hit with the full weight of Vala, which, fortunately, wasn’t that much.

“Welcome back, Samantha. We really did miss you!” 

“Thank you! It’s good to be home,” she answered, but Vala too was already out of the room before she finished.

They’d all left her. “Hey, wait! That’s not fair!” Sam wanted to call to an empty lab. Cowards! 

Or people who hadn’t done much of their own work for two weeks, she realized with a sigh, opening her own e-mail. Holy _crap_. The number of new mails seemed to have at least one too many digits. 

“Oh, come on!” Vala suddenly reappeared in Sam’s office. “You know we only tease you because we love you!” She jerked her head towards the hall. “The boys are waiting for us.”

So Sam joined them for a while, but the awful thing was that as badly as Sam had wanted to see their faces again, she was starting to feel smothered, like the others were using up too much air. What she really wanted to do, she finally confessed, was “drive. Just drive. Away from base.”

“We’ll go with you,” Cam offered immediately, but Teal’c looked disgruntled, and Sam had to grin. Teal’c had been in her car once.

“Why don’t you boys play your games,” Vala suggested, “and we’ll go do ‘girl stuff.’”

The “boys” gaped, Sam stumbled over her words, and next thing she knew, Vala was guiding her to an elevator while their teammates receded behind them.

“Knew you’d need some space,” Vala said with a wink, as they slipped into an elevator full of personnel leaving base. Vala had a very flexible sense of personal space, Daniel had warned her right before she first met the woman. Even now, Vala had a hand on Sam’s elbow.

When Sam felt the fresh air on her face as they left the Mountain, she didn’t mind so much, and as she slipped into the driver’s seat, she felt a little better having someone else with her—and especially Vala, her friend, a woman who should be bitter but still held out hope for the same things Sam wanted so badly.

“Colorado Springs...didn’t look the same in the other universe,” she said, as she waited for Vala to buckle up. It amused her that the woman who had been host to a Goa’uld, who had survived being burned to death and being sucked through a wormhole into another galaxy and giving birth to the Orici and God knew what all else, was always very careful to fasten her seatbelt. Something about inferior Earth technology.

“Really? What did it look like?” Vala’s tone was just curious, not carefully calculated, not measured to allow her to answer if she wanted and not to answer if it was too traumatic. 

Sam felt immensely grateful. “Well, they’d been under martial law for three years, so....” 

And Sam found that as long as she omitted her little side trip to the cells at Area 51, she could tell the story, and she actually felt better for telling it. She’d given General Landry the overview, and a more detailed debriefing was scheduled for tomorrow. There would be reports to file. But none of them need ever mention the bitter thief who didn’t even attempt to con a woman offering friendship, or a veteran pilot who didn’t care to try to walk anymore.

And Sam was never going to tell Vala about her counterpart; it was easy enough to pretend they had never met. Her friend would probably just shrug it off, but Sam wasn’t a hundred percent sure, and the idea certainly wouldn’t help her in any way.

She found herself telling Vala about Rodney McKay, whom she would never have believed any version of herself would marry in any universe. And about General Hammond, who was still a good man in the other universe but wasn’t willing to stand up for what was right, though Sam suspected he sympathized, and hoped maybe he would eventually find a way to put in a few private words with the president. And how unbelievably jarring it was to find a Landry who didn’t listen to her, who smiled and lied as easily as—

“You’d do it, if you had to,” Vala interrupted.

Sam glanced away from the road to find Vala had a small, sad smile.

“I’ve lied when I’ve been ordered to,” Sam admitted. “But I hate it. I—”

“If you were responsible for everyone, you’d do it on your own.” Vala seemed quietly confident.

“How can you say that?” Frustration poured out. Here she’d expected sympathy from Vala! “Oh, I forgot who I was talking to,” she added.

Vala didn’t reply. And didn’t reply. And still didn’t reply.

Sam looked at her again. Vala was looking back, still sad, even a little hurt. Sam sighed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said—”

Vala held up a hand. “I know, I know. You’re right. I’m not like you. I lie much more often. I enjoy lying sometimes. I think it’s fun to trick people,” she said matter-of-factly. “You?” Vala let her hand fall. “You don’t. You—well, quite frankly, you take things way too seriously. Haven’t you ever lied for a joke? You know, a prank?”

Sam couldn’t control the slight smile. “Not so much lie, as not tell...everything I know.”

“And it’s fun, right?” Vala didn’t wait for an answer. “So you can do it. You can...convey a falsehood. Now if you have to do it, if you really think you have to do it, for the good of everyone—”

“But it wasn’t for the good of everyone!” Sam objected. “It was so he could win the stupid vote!” 

“The vote mattered,” Vala said. “It was a real election, right? Your people seem to think that being able to vote on something is very important, even if most of them don’t bother to do it regularly.”

Sam nodded, not seeing where this was going.

“So what if President Landry lost?”

Sam frowned. She didn’t know. She’d never asked. “I guess they’d have held new elections. Replaced him.”

“And in the meantime, the most powerful man in the world would have been a lame turkey.”

The bark of laughter that came out of her own mouth surprised Sam more than it did Vala. “Do you take lessons on our expressions from Teal’c?” she asked. “Lame _duck_! It’s a lame duck!”

Vala shrugged. “It’s a bird you eat.” But she repeated quietly to herself, “lame duck.” Sam didn’t know if Vala was stringing her along or really trying to master American expressions and not quite getting them.

“The point is,” Vala said languidly, “that, while I’m sure President Landry wanted to hold onto power, I think if he were truly as scheming as you make him sound, you’d still be there.”

Sam shrugged. “I’m not sure why he let me go. Still. I’ll never know, will I?”

“No.” Vala’s tone was deceptively light. “And I’m sorry you had to go through all that, but you’re back now, right? Just stop looking back.”

The light in front of them turned red. Sam had a moment to face Vala. “Why are you defending President Landry? You never even met the man!”

“I’m not so much defending Landry,” Vala continued in the same neutral tone. “I’m defending the Major Carter who must have made all those choices that you haven’t gotten around to telling me about.”

A honk a moment later made Sam realize she’d taken her attention from the lights, and she drove on.

“Come on, Samantha. I know you well enough at this point to know when you’re blowing off steam. You’ve been blowing off steam about this McKay fellow.” She could hear a sudden smile in Vala’s voice. “Next time we go to the Pegasus galaxy, I really must pay more attention to that man to see why you get so worked up over him.” 

The smile was gone when Vala spoke again. “But after ten solid minutes of your rant about President Landry, and how unlike General Landry he is, I gave up worrying about whether you were afraid General Landry is really like President Landry and started worrying about why he upset you so much. And after another five minutes—”

“No,” Sam cut in finally. “I’m sure I wasn’t talking about him that long.”

“The exact times are unimportant,” Vala answered a little patronizingly. “The point is, you’re going out of your way to tell me in just how many ways this president was wrong and how wrong he was and why he was wrong. But not a word about good little soldier Major Samantha Carter who worked a few floors away from the horrible awful president but apparently never got up the nerve to walk over and tell him how wrong he was.

“No, Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, whom I have heard tell General Landry, always respectfully and politely but firmly, exactly when and where and why he is wrong, has not a word to say about Major Samantha Carter.”

What? “Excuse me,” Sam said, “but I think I got lost in your sentence.”

Vala laughed. “Yes,” she said. “That one was worthy of Daniel, wasn’t it? Only he’d have said it faster.”

Sam had to laugh too.

“The point is, you’ve complained about damn near everyone in that universe. Teal’c taught me a useful Earth term from psychology. ‘Denial.’ You have been so busily avoiding the topic of your counterpart—while you drove as far from the Mountain as you can get before you need to buy gas—that I couldn’t help but notice.”

“Damn.” The traffic light wasn’t the only thing Sam hadn’t been watching. “How long as the indicator light been on?”

“About a minute and a half before I said something.” Vala snickered.

“So you’ve been working on psychology in your spare time?”

“Well, between that psych evaluation and that evil little rodent man messing with my mind before I even got on SG-1, I thought I’d better get a grip on what your little planet calls ‘mental health.’”

Sam glanced over at Vala. The other woman had started fidgeting with her fingernails. That couldn’t be good.

“Trying to be sure to stay ahead of the shrinks?”

“I try to stay ahead of everyone, darling. Reading about Daniel’s lovely sojourn at your mental health facility just added some urgency—”

“You read that file? Daniel’s gonna kill you!” Sam said before she thought.

“Let’s hope he gets the chance. But you know he could never really hurt me,” Vala added with bravado.

Or was that supposed to be bravada? Sam wondered. And the person she’d like to ask wasn’t here. “No. I’d just hate to see him, say, break his hand pounding a wall so that he doesn’t hit you.”

“He never needs to know,” Vala added silkily.

“No, and I won’t tell him. You’re the one who always makes sure he finds out when you’ve been doing something you know you shouldn’t.” She glanced at Vala again to find a full-blown grin on the other woman’s face. “There’s a psychological term for that, I’m sure!”

“Ooh, probably, but I’m not familiar with that one. Perhaps Teal’c will know.” 

They went on for a few minutes in silence.

“You can’t distract me, you know,” Vala said. “Let me cut to the chase sequence.”

Damn. She must be doing that on purpose. Her expressions were so nearly right, but not quite—and that was at least the fourth idiom she’d mangled since Sam had returned not twelve hours ago.

“You aren’t talking about Major Samantha Carter,” she went on. “I thus have good reason to suspect you feel guilt and doubtless worry about her actions, or in this case probably inactions, in an alternate universe.”

“No, I don’t. That would be stupid,” Sam replied bluntly. She had felt some guilt, but she didn’t anymore. She was sure of it.

“Stupid? Perhaps. Human? Entirely.” Vala sighed. “Look, damn it, you’re not going to make me go dredge stuff out of my own experience, are you?”

Sam didn’t answer until she could look at Vala’s face a few moments later. The sun was quite low now, but even in the dim and partial light Sam could tell Vala was serious. “You’ve been to an alternate universe?” she said, trying to lighten the mood.

“No, and I never want to go. But I know what it’s like to feel responsible for things that—that it wasn’t really _you_ doing.” 

Sam took a few moments to absorb this. Vala talked as little as possible about her time as host to Qetesh. Daniel had told Sam after Vala was lost through the wormhole about how Vala had tried to save the people whose planet Qetesh had ruled, and how hard she took it when she couldn’t help with the plague.

“I don’t really need to say more, do I?” Vala broke the silence. “Good,” she added after a few moments when Sam couldn’t yet speak. “You weren’t responsible for the mistakes that they made, although they might not deserve as harsh a judgment as you think. You have, in fact, been a force for good in that universe. Be—be proud.”

Startled, Sam looked at Vala again, but the woman was looking off in the distance. But she had done some of the same things in her own universe! She had helped ruin Alec Colson’s life here; she checked from time to time to make sure he was doing well enough off-world, but she had made it impossible for him to return to his own planet! She had also—

Vala suddenly interrupted her thoughts. “There’s a gas station with a decent price,” Vala said, pointing. 

What did Vala know of gas prices? Before Sam could ask her how often she’d been getting out of the SGC, and with whom, Vala added with a squeal, “And an ice cream parlor! Can we go?”

And that was the end of talk about alternate universes for the evening. The next day, Sam found her need to talk about it much diminished, but of course there was still a detailed debriefing. And a report. And then worlds to save, and a teammate to find.

 

Epilogue

A couple of weeks later, Sam found herself staring as six Ori warships came through the Supergate.

“Yeah. I think that went well,” General O’Neill said.

Cam replied before she could: “We knew eliminating the Ori might not stop their followers.”

“I still think it was the right thing to do,” Daniel said.

At his words, Sam broke off staring at the screen and looked at her friend. He seemed himself. Tired, but determined. Certain that he’d done the right thing. God, it was good to have him back. Cam was saying something about how they had to do it.

And then Daniel opened his mouth again, and said, “Well, I suppose we’d better get back to Earth; Kinsey will probably want to have me shot or something” and ruined the illusion that he was fine.

“Kinsey?” General O’Neill hollered. “Kinsey?” He managed to be even louder the second time.

Vala mouthed something at Daniel, making his quick recovery less impressive. 

“Woolsey!” he shouted back. “I meant _Woolsey_. Kinsey, Woolsey—you know, Jack.”

“Woolsey’s incompetent. Kinsey was evil. World of difference.”

They might have just stood there arguing except that Teal’c moved closer and said, “DanielJackson, I believe you should return to the medical bay.”

“What he said,” O’Neill agreed, and soon they were all hustling him back to the infirmary, except for Sam, because _someone_ had to fly the ship. The voices grew fainter down the hallway. 

“You do it all the time, Jack! No one makes a stink when _you_ mix up names,” Daniel was whining, and three or four different voices were answering.

Sam was very glad when Cam finally relieved her and she was able to go visit Daniel herself. 

“He’s sleeping,” said O’Neill when she reached the bay.

“No, he’s not,” came an annoyed response from the bed. 

“He _was_ sleeping.”

“I’d like to look him over a bit more, if that’s all right, Sir,” Sam told the General. 

“Please!” He waved her towards the bed.

Sam looked from Daniel to the General and back again. She rolled her eyes a little towards O’Neill, and Daniel, as expected, said, “Don’t you have General things to go do?”

“I sent a brief update to the SGC,” Sam told him, “but I’m sure they’ll want something more complete.”

He complained, but he left. Teal’c and Vala were nowhere in sight. So finally Sam had a chance to talk to Daniel. The others had all talked to him while he was a Prior, but she’d hardly had any opportunity—or hadn’t made any opportunity, she acknowledged to herself guiltily.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Fine.”

Sam snorted and rolled her eyes. “That’s why you got Kinsey and Woolsey mixed up.”

“Hey, Jack does it—”

“The General has never mixed up Kinsey and Woolsey.”

“Well, he’s always mixing up some name.”

“He’s always making names...into something else. Something familiar. He doesn’t actually confuse two different people, or groups.” Sam knew she had her lecturing tone, but Daniel needed it. 

He didn’t reply, and she checked the numbers on the monitor she’d hooked up to his finger. She wrote them down on a basic chart she’d started for Daniel. His blood pressure and pulse had been up and down. She didn’t like the fluctuations, but there wasn’t much she could do.

“Hey! Who undressed me?” Daniel was looking at the scrubs as if he had just noticed them. He looked at her in confusion. “You didn’t....”

“I had to fly the ship. Bet it was Vala.” She couldn’t quite hold her face steady.

Daniel groaned. “They wouldn’t do that to me. They wouldn’t.”

She couldn’t help but grin.

“And this exam you’re giving me?”

“Just did it.” She continued to smile. “I just wanted to have some time.... I know first aid, but that’s about all. A full-work up will have to wait until I can turn you back over to—”

“Oh, yeah, Janet’s gonna kill me,” he moaned. A look of horror crossed his face almost as fast as it crossed hers. “Oh, hell. I mean Doctor Lam. It’s just a slip, Sam. It doesn’t mean—”

“It means your memories got shuffled around,” she said, making a note on the chart to that effect. She knew her notation wasn’t really helpful, but she figured Dr. Lam would ask her about it. Should she add something about his cursing? Daniel didn’t do that very much. At least not in English.

“Don’t tell anyone about that one, please?” he wheedled as she hesitated over whether to write more. “It was just...I’m sorry, Sam. I really am.”

“We’re worried about you, Daniel! We haven’t seen you in months—”

“I know, I know. And I am, well, a little bit confused. I’ve had a _lot_ of memories to hold onto,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “Merlin’s are fading already. As they go, mine will fall back into place.” He smiled. “I’ve had experience with this sort of thing before.”

“With the memories of Ancients being downloaded into your brain? With becoming a Prior?” She was going to say more, but he held up a hand to stop her.

“I missed you, too, Sam.” He looked at her carefully. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

She knew he was changing the subject quite deliberately, but arguing with him about his memories wouldn’t help. At least she could try to cheer him up. Better to skip the injuries she had suffered not too long after they’d lost him. “Well, I came up with a way to phase-shift increasingly large areas so that the Ori couldn’t attack.” 

“That’s great!” He looked excited, but then his face fell. “I don’t suppose it will be enough if the Ori fleet _I_ let into the galaxy reaches Earth.”

She smiled. “Oh, I think it will. In fact, I know it will. It’s big enough to shift Earth out of phase.” She leaned towards him and smiled broadly. “I got to field-test it.”

He frowned. “Field-test? They attacked Earth? When? I should have known¬—why didn’t any of you tell me, at least?”

She grinned this time. “Not our Earth. I went through to an alternate Earth and saved them from an Ori attack.”

He blinked and looked past her, obviously thinking. “Well, that was nice of you.” He paused. The furrows on his forehead didn’t ease much. “Maybe kind of makes up for that one Earth sacrificing their last chance to get off-world to send me back to save our Earth. A karma sort of thing.”

“Yeah.” She added, “Maybe kind of makes up for the alternate me trying to steal a ZPM from our galaxy” and wondered why she hadn’t thought of it that way before. And maybe her speaking out helped to balance Major Carter’s silence. Maybe even her own collusion in silencing Colson.

He relaxed a bit more into his pillow. “So the field really saved the whole Earth?”

“Yep.” She realized that enough time had passed to alleviate the bitterness she had from that universe. Now she could feel some pride in her accomplishment—as Vala had told her to do. “The president thanked me. Repeatedly.” Her face was hurting. She hadn’t smiled this much in, well, months. Ask me, she thought silently.

“President...Hayes?”

“President Landry.”

His mouth dropped open. She hadn’t seen that expression in a while. Soon enough, of course, that mouth was working again. “So who was running the SGC?”

“Hammond.”

“Wow. And Jack was...?”

Her smile slipped a little, and she shook her head. Not my universe, she had to remind herself.

“Ooh. And I was...?”

She shook her head again. “Kidnapped by the Ori.”

“So everything was playing out the same way there? Mitchell was...?”

She shook her head once more. “Better not to ask.”

But Daniel wouldn’t let things be. “Dead?” 

She meant not to reply, but he read something in her look.

“Injured? Oh, maybe in that universe he never recovered from—” He must not have liked the look he no doubt saw on her face. “What? I’m right?”

“You can’t read my mind, can you?” she blurted, automatically stepping back.

“No! That’s an obvious guess, Sam.”

“Oh.” She folded her arms, not sure she believed him.

“And I’m betting Vala had Hammond wrapped around her—No?” He looked sad.

Sam could play poker. She could even win at poker. But when something real was at stake, it was hard not to let things show, at least to her friends, whatever Vala thought of her potential as a liar. “Let’s not play this game. I wouldn’t tell the guys....” She knew the moment it was out that she had slipped. The others might include Sam and Vala as “guys,” but she wouldn’t.

“But you told Vala.”

She looked away. “Vala....”

“You needed to tell someone,” Daniel said, with real understanding, and she felt bad that he wasn’t the one she needed to tell. So often he had been. But he wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty. He was still wrapping his head around the other universe. “I guess when I came back from my first trip...to an alternate universe...I told too much.” He gave her a wicked look. “Told you guys you and Jack were engaged, and you never got over it.” 

She pretended to smack him with the clipboard she found she was still holding. He raised his arms as if to defend himself. 

Then he looked serious again. “You weren’t...you hadn’t...your alternate wasn’t married to Jack, was she?”

“No, not to him. But she was married. Had been,” she amended.

“Did you meet yourself? How long...?”

“Two weeks. I was there two weeks. She was...killed by the accident that brought me there.” At his questioning look, she explained what had happened.

“So who was the widower?”

“Ex. I’d—she’d—divorced him.” She weighed telling Daniel. He _probably_ wouldn’t use it against her. It might distract him from asking about his own role in that universe. He didn’t need to know that there too he had brought Ori attention to bear on Earth.

“And...?”

“If you tell anyone,” she said, looking around dramatically and lowering her voice, “I will kill you.”

“But you said it wasn’t Jack?”

“No!”

“It wasn’t Jack, but you’d kill me.” He smiled, not asking for the moment but obviously enjoying the challenge of trying to guess. “Not Cam, because.... Can’t be.... But it must be someone I know, or you wouldn’t be threatening. Graham Simmons?” 

Sam rolled her eyes.

“Oh, good. Couldn’t really see you going for him. But there’d be no need to threaten me with death if—oh, not Jay Felger!” 

“Holy Hannah!” She threatened him with the clipboard again. “Not in _any_ universe.”

“Huh. But it’s someone I know, and I’m getting the feeling I might be on the right track—”

She really shouldn’t have started this, Sam decided. How much worse could the guessing get? It would be better just to tell—

“Oh, my God—Rodney McKay?” 

This time, she dropped the clipboard on his feet. It wasn’t even on purpose.

“Ow!” Daniel wrapped both arms around his middle and tried not to laugh. “Oh, God, Sam! How long did it last?” He could barely gasp out the question. He could keep from laughing audibly, but his whole body shook.

“Some things,” she said, picking up the clipboard and tossing it safely onto a table, “it’s better not to know.”

“Not for us, Sam,” he smiled wistfully. “We’d both rather know, wouldn’t we?” He held her with a look, and she knew what he was really asking. That didn’t make her want to answer. “What aren’t you telling me, Sam? You’re trying to distract me. What had I done in that universe? Worse than what I did here?”

She shook her head, and the arms around his middle loosened. “Nothing worse. About the same. I stopped asking for details after a point. I just...didn’t want to know. I really didn’t.”

“Did I bring the Ori to that galaxy?” he asked gently, as if to spare her, rather than himself, and she wondered how she ever could have thought she’d avoid this moment. The only way he wouldn’t ask would be if he were dead. “If the Ori kidnapped me, they must have encountered me before, right? I must have used the communication device....”

Sam shrugged. “I stopped asking. I really did. There _are_ some things I don’t want to know.” That was true enough. She could live with not knowing how long that Carter and McKay had been married, or why they got married, or why they divorced. And Daniel could live without knowing that his counterpart had indeed contacted the Ori, and without knowing that the woman who had been with him had died. Maybe she could lie convincingly. And maybe some things were worth lying about.

“The rest of us....” She stopped and looked at Daniel, grateful again to have him back, and grateful to be able to confide some things, if not everything. “The General—Jack O’Neill was dead. Cam couldn’t walk and was smoking and drinking. He was.... You don’t want to know. Teal’c had gone back to his people; as far as I know, he was okay. But I don’t know for sure, because no one had seen him in three years. Vala was...Vala was in jail, and I went to see her, Daniel, and she was just so _bitter_ —she wasn’t the same person at all, and....” She sat on his bed, finally able to spill the bits she had kept back. “I didn’t realize how much I’d come to count on her until then.” 

He put his hand on hers, a little awkwardly because she was sitting down by his knees, but she appreciated the gesture. “She’s kinda funny that way,” he said quietly.

“We were all so _damaged_.... I wanted someone to be the same as here, so I stopped asking about you.” She hadn’t realized it was true until that moment. She’d hardly said a word about Daniel after seeing that file on the Ori. “You can see the good in people. You could find the good in that Jack O’Neill who sent a bomb back to Abydos after tricking you into giving him the Gate address. You could convince him to talk to Teal’c. And you convinced that Catherine and that Sam Carter to get you through the Gate. And I could barely convince President Landry to keep his word and let me go home.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “And in the end, I think he really did it just because it was a bigger pain having me in their universe than letting me go.”

Daniel looked at her in amazement. “You a pain? Sam, I’ve been on SG-1 for...a decade, give or take.” Give or take? That year he spent dead, _ascended_ , just brushed off like that? Apparently so, because he continued, “You are the least pain...the smallest pain.... Everyone on SG-1 is a bigger pain than you are, and I know that includes me.” He winced a little. “And maybe I do need some rest.

“But you know you’re not responsible for your alternates, Sam. You’re not responsible for what their Sam Carter did—even if she did marry McKay—no, I won’t tell. At least,” he said with another wicked grin, “not without a good reason.” And he didn’t define “good reason,” she couldn’t help but notice. Blackmail in what he considered a good enough cause surely counted.

“And you saved their whole planet. But, Sam,” he said earnestly, his voice dropping so that she leaned towards him, “if you wanted to think of me as undamaged in _any_ universe, you should lie down on that bed over there”—he pointed with his free hand—“because you need a rest at least as badly as I do.”

She giggled in spite of herself. “I’d better let you sleep.” 

“Sam?” He grabbed at her as she got off the bed. “I’m glad you made it back from that other universe. So glad I can’t tell you.” He smiled. “And congratulations on saving the world! Again!” He waved, but he was already leaning back into his pillows.

Sam went through the door and would have walked straight into General O’Neill if he hadn’t stepped back quickly. “Sir?” she asked in surprise. Teal’c and Vala were waiting as well, but they were standing farther back.

“Not eavesdropping, Carter.” He spread his hands innocently.

“O’Neill was unable to hear anything through the doors,” Teal’c translated, to a dirty look from the General.

“Not even Teal’c could,” Vala added helpfully.

“He gonna be okay?”

“I’m not a doctor, sir.”

“I know: you’re an engineer!” Vala turned towards Teal’c, who beamed at her—well, that was as close as Teal’c came to beaming.

Sam tried to glare but didn’t have it in her heart at that moment. “I’m a physicist.”

“Same thing,” Vala said, as the General muttered, “close enough” and rocked back on his heels, and it wasn’t worth arguing with them.

“Did DanielJackson seem lucid?” Teal’c asked.

“A little confused at first, but yeah, he—you know, sometimes he has a better grip of what’s going on than I do.” It really wasn’t fair of her to turn his recovery into her psychotherapy, she realized, but she’d never meant to. Maybe Daniel needed someone to need him, maybe he needed to help somebody else, more than he needed sympathy right now. He’d never been good at accepting sympathy.

She was momentarily lost in her thoughts and almost missed the General muttering, “No kidding.”

“Sir?”

“Forest.” He pointed at the closed sick bay door. “Trees.” He pointed at her and waited. As she stared at him, knowing she should be getting it, he explained, “Details, Carter. Both of you can get lost in them, but Daniel does pull back eventually and get the big picture. And share it with the rest of us. Whether we want him to or not.” He bounced on his heels again. “Well, now we’ve all had a chance to talk to him. Let’s let him sleep.” Yet he lingered.

“I will watch over DanielJackson,” Teal’c said, and promptly disappeared into the medical bay.

The General hesitated another moment before turned and started walking away. “Mitchell probably needs company,” he called back.

Sam realized the General knew as well as she did that she couldn’t examine Daniel worth a damn, and that her avoidance of Daniel-as-Prior had not gone unnoticed. Hell, they probably all realized she’d been avoiding Daniel before she realized it herself. Oh, God. In a universe where she was just a little bit worse with people, and Rodney McKay just a little bit better—maybe she could see how it could happen. 

But that was not her universe, and she was never going back. With any luck, she’d see this universe’s Rodney McKay rarely if at all. __  
  
Vala hung back. “And now we’re all back where we belong, so all is right with the world. Galaxy. Universe?” She frowned. “No, world.”

Sam laughed and started walking. “In our case, I think ‘galaxy’ applies—though outside the SGC, you’d better say ‘world.’”

“Well, one day your president will tell your people, and we’ll all be heroes!” Walking beside her, Vala waved her arms happily. “I bet Daniel just saved the galaxy again.”

Sam smiled. “I’ve been a hero. I think I like it better this way.”

Vala’s grin widened. “That’s why we had to get Daniel back. So _he_ can do all the press conferences _for_ us. Say, what’s the going rate on your planet for saving the galaxy? I suppose we’ll have to cut in General O’Neill, too, but it should be a big enough pot for all of us.”

Sam let Vala continue with her grand plans and felt comfort in the chattering voice—a different comfort than she’d felt with Daniel, but a very real one. As Vala said, all was right with the world. Or galaxy. Or at least, for the first time in a long time, she felt confident that it would be soon.


End file.
